Improving Energy Efficiency of MQTT-SN in Lossy Environments Using Seed-Based Network Coding

This paper presents an energy-efficient solution to overcome packet loss in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) by adding seed-based Random Linear Network Coding to MQTT for Sensor Networks (MQTT-SN). Whereas most sensors integrated in common WSN devices consume little energy, using the radio is costly. To increase battery lifetime, devices try to minimize their radio uptime, while still satisfy timeliness and reliability of delivered data. The proposed approach uses an optimized seed-based intrasession Network Coding scheme for Forward Error Correction to shorten the sensor node's radio uptime, reducing its power consumption. The presented approach is conform to the MQTT-SN specification and, thus, interoperable with existing systems. Since the implementation is based on the application layer, it is seamlessly deployable via Over-The-Air-Programming. The presented evaluation is based on collected traces from a real-world WSN deployment in the context of Precision Agriculture. Radio uptime and power consumption measurements in an experimental testbed confirm the achieved benefits.