Cross-layer activity management in an 802-15.4 sensor network

Sensor networks operate under conflicting requirements of maintaining the desired value of information throughput while simultaneously maximizing the lifetime of individual nodes. In doing so, the characteristics of the operating environment, including the MAC and PHY layers, have to be taken into account as well. In this article we consider activity management of sensor nodes in a beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4-compliant network. Activity management is performed through lightweight probabilistic control of the duration of sleep and service periods of individual sensors. We present two distributed activity management policies which are capable of achieving and maintaining the desired network reliability while maximizing the lifetime of the entire network.