Dynamic Switching-Based Data Forwarding for Low-Duty-Cycle Wireless Sensor Networks

In this work, we introduce the concept of Dynamic Switch-based Forwarding (DSF) that optimizes the 1) expected data delivery ratio, 2) expected communication delay, or 3) expected energy consumption for low-duty-cycle wireless sensor networks under unreliable communication links. DSF is designed for networks with possibly unreliable communication links and predetermined node communication schedules. To our knowledge, these are the most encouraging results to date in this new research direction. In this paper, DSF is evaluated with a theoretical analysis, extensive simulation, and physical testbed consisting of 20 MicaZ motes. Results reveal the remarkable advantage of DSF in extremely low-duty-cycle sensor networks in comparison to three well-known solutions (ETX [1], PRR × D [2], and DESS [3]). We also demonstrate our solution defaults into ETX in always-awake networks and DESS in perfect-link networks.