CHARON: Routing in low-density opportunistic wireless sensor networks

Combining wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with delay-tolerant networking (DTN) has the potential to extend their use in a multitude of previously impossible applications. However, and despite numerous proposed solutions, there is still wide debate as to how to best route messages in these networks and, more importantly, how to do it in an energy-efficient way. This paper proposes CHARON (Convergent Hybrid-replication Approach to Routing in Opportunistic Networks), an approach that focuses on maximizing efficiency in addition to delivery statistics. CHARON uses delay as a routing metric, and provides basic QoS mechanisms, with both a quasi-single-copy mode for general traffic and a multi-copy mode for urgent data. It also integrates time synchronization and radio power management mechanisms. Simulation results show that it is able to achieve good delivery statistics with lower overhead than comparable solutions.