A Robust Reliable Low-power High Throughput Data Collection Wireless Sensor Network

A robust data collection protocol is proposed in this paper for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) applications which require high throughput, reliability and low-power. In terms of high throughput, time division multiple access (TDMA) is more suitable than carrier sense multiple access (CSMA). Efficient TDMA protocol requires solid synchronization and more optimized time slot scheduling. Reliable data collection requires end-to-end packet retransmission. These factors inhibit the implementation of comprehensive data collection protocols. This paper provides a heuristic TDMA scheduling algorithm for optimal time slot scheduling of multi-channel communication. The combination of TDMA and multi-channel communication enables to maintain high throughput and low power communication. Besides, constructive interference (CI) based flooding technique is utilized in this paper to deliver robust synchronization and efficient downward communication. Thus, we are able to combine constructive interference based flooding with packet retransmission for collection reliability. The proposed protocol is implemented on self-made sensor nodes through the Contiki operating system. Experimental results from a deployed network of 29 self-made sensor nodes show that the protocol is able to sustain persistent operation and provide a throughput of up to 14.74 KByte/s with 100% data collection.