Opportunistic Network Erasure Coding in Disruptive Sensor Networks

Sensor network has found critical applications in extreme environments. However, in the extreme environments, a predictable and stable path may never exist, since the transient network connectivity, asymmetric links and unstable nodes are prevalent. Thus, the extreme environments severely challenge its basic function of data collection. Particularly, those disruptive conditions make traditional data collection protocols inefficient. In this paper, we design Opportunistic Network Erasure Coding (ONEC) protocol for collaborative data collection in disruptive sensor networks. The idea behind ONEC protocol is to study how each node determines code degree distribution and receding strategies in a distributed fashion, so that all data of network can be recovered with high probability upon receiving any sufficient amount of encoded packets. First, each node derives code degree distribution through recursive discrete deconvolution. Second, every node conducts selective receding of its own sensing data and opportunistically received data. Last, the ONEC ensures decoder can recover all data from any sufficient amount of encoded packets with high probability. The performance evaluations through extensive simulation validate that ONEC can truly achieve efficient data collection with high reliability in disruptive sensor networks and outperform other existing approaches in terms of network goodput, message complexity and buffer space.