Delay Sensitive and Energy Efficient Distributed Slot Assignment Algorithm for Sensor Networks Under Convergecast Data Traffic

The scarcest resource for most of the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is energy and one of the major factors in energy consumption for WSNs is due to communication. Not only transmission but also reception is the source of energy consumption. The lore to decrease energy consumption is to turn off radio circuit when it is not needed. This is why TDMA has advantages over contention based methods. Time slot assignment algorithm is an essential part of TDMA based systems. Although centralized time slot assignment protocols are preferred in many WSNs, centralized approach is not scalable. In this paper, a new energy efficient and delay sensitive distributed time slot assignment algorithm (DTSM) is proposed for sensor networks under convergecast traffic pattern. DTSM which is developed as part of the military monitory (MILMON) system introduced in [16], aims to operate with low delay and low energy. Instead of collision based periods, it assigns slots by the help of tiny request slots. While traditional slot assignment algorithms do not allow assigning the same slot within two hop neighbors, because of the hidden node problem, DTSM can assign, if assignment is suitable for convergecast traffic. Simulation results have shown that delay and energy consumption performance of DTSM is superior to FPRP, DRAND, and TRAMA which are the most known distributed slot assignment protocols for WSNs or ad hoc networks. Although DTSM has somewhat long execution time, its scalability characteristic may provide application specific time durations.