CoLaNet: a cross-layer design of energy-efficient wireless sensor networks

For a wireless sensor network, the primary design criterion is to save the energy consumption as much as possible while achieving the given task. Most of recent research works have only focused on the individual layer issues and ignore the importance of interworking between different layers in a sensor network. In this paper, we use a cross-layer approach to propose an energy-efficient sensor network - CoLaNet, which takes (a) the characteristics and requirements of the applications, (b) routing in the network layer, and (c) the data scheduling in MAC layer into consideration. Specifically, we use the characteristics of the applications to construct the routing tree and then formulate the routing and MAC issues into a vertex-coloring problem. By solving that problem, CoLaNet is able to determine the proper data transmission schedule for each sensor node. We evaluate CoLaNet through extensive simulations and the results show that such cross-layer approach is energy-efficient and able to achieve significant performance improvement as well.