Performance of energy-efficient TDMA schemes in data-gathering scenarios with periodic sources

Energy-efficient transportation of periodical sensor readings towards a single sink in wireless sensor networks is a challenging task. In general, two data-gathering strategies exist: on-demand and bulk data forwarding. For both strategies, cross-layer techniques are a promising approach, where TDMA is tailored to the underlying routing tree. Therefore, different TDMA schemes are compared regarding achievable throughput, packet delay, and energy-efficiency for various sampling rates and scenarios. Existing schemes perform well in dedicated topologies only. The new and simple TDMA scheme presented in this paper outperforms its predecessors in all scenarios under consideration. These findings are substantiated by both theoretical analysis and extensive simulation.