An unequal redundancy level-based mechanism for reliable data collection in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Most applications require high reliability with low delay in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Unfortunately, it is a challenge issue to achieve reliable communication because of the lossy nature of wireless channels. In this paper, a novel unequal redundancy level (URL) data collection scheme is proposed to achieve high reliability for wireless sensor networks while long lifetime can be still guaranteed. Aiming at the imbalance of energy consumption in WSNs, a URL data collection scheme adopts network coding-based mechanism with high redundancy level in non-hotspot areas while adopting low redundancy level in hotspot areas. The theoretical analysis and experimental results show that, comparing with equal redundancy level (ERL) approach, the URL approach improves the lifetime by 15–50 % under the same reliability, and it can also improve the reliability by 14.1–28.3 % under the same lifetime. Comparing with an SW-ARQ approach, the URL approach improves the lifetime by 7–30 % under the same reliability, and it can also improve the reliability by 8–23 % under the same lifetime.