A Comprehensive Study of Power-Efficient Rendezvous Schemes for Wireless Sensor Networks

A Comprehensive Study of Power-Efficient Rendezvous Schemes for Wireless Sensor Networks by En-Yi Lin Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering-Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences University of California, Berkeley Professor Jan Rabaey, Chair Wireless sensor networks comprise of a large number of wireless sensor nodes, densely deployed in a wide area without a predetermined topology. With such characteristics, wireless sensor networks produce easily accessible information about the physical environment, which spans a broad range of applications in this realm. Wireless sensor nodes are characterized by their limited power resources. Given typical sensor network traffic loads, one of the most effective ways to minimize power consumption is to power off nodes as much as possible. With this approach, it is necessary to arrange simultaneous on-time for nodes to communicate, a method referred to as a rendezvous scheme. This research proposes and analyzes three major categories of rendezvous schemes, and compares their performances. The chosen performance evaluation metrics include both power efficiency and latency, which are the most important factors in wireless sensor networks. The rendezvous schemes are compared against one another in different network scenarios, namely, different traffic loads, data packet sizes, network densities, channel fading conditions, and with different transceivers. The results, obtained by both analysis and simulation, identify different network environment as the most appropriate scenario for different categories of schemes to operate in. In short, this research incorporates the physical layer and upper layer influences on rendezvous schemes to provide a general guideline on which rendezvous scheme to select for different sensor network scenarios.

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