DTNLite : A Reliable Data Transfer Architecture for Sensor Networks

We present a network architecture, DTNLite, for reliable message delivery in sensor networks facing problems of high mobility, frequent disconnections and unreliable nodes . It is based on the DTN( Delay Tolerant Networking) architecture and its main features are asynchronous message delivery combined with custody transfer on an overlay network of sensor motes. We present an implementation of this architecture for the TinyOS platform targeting data collection applications. We also explore the various issues in reliable custody transfer and investigate the particular issue of querying and selection of custody hops in detail. Our simulation results show that selection criteria that use energy or delay as metrics are able to profitably exploit asymmetries in the network.