A new distributed scheduling scheme for timely multi-hop transmission of delay-sensitive information in wireless sensor networks

We propose a new time division multiple access(TDMA)-based distributed scheduling scheme for timely multi-hop transmission of delay-sensitive information in wireless sensor networks(WSNs). We first introduce two multi-hop delay factors which can be caused by conventional TDMA scheduling; queueing delay and the delay by random link schedule. Next, this paper drives average end-to-end delay of the proposed scheduling scheme and the conventional scheduling scheme that randomly schedules the slots on the path. Finally, this paper simulates the TDMA network for the performance comparison. From the simulation results, when the average number of hops is 2.66, 4.1, 4.75, and 6.3, the proposed sequential scheduling scheme reduces the average end-to-end delay by about 22%, 36%, 48%, and 55% respectively compared to the random scheduling scheme.