Delay-energy aware routing protocol for sensor and actor networks

We present a novel delay-energy aware routing protocol (DEAP) for heterogeneous sensor and actor networks. DEAP enable a wide range of tradeoffs between delay and energy consumption. The two major components of DEAP are: (a) an adaptive energy management scheme that controls the wake up cycle of sensors based on the experienced packet delay; and (b) a loose geographic routing protocol that in each hop distributes the load among a group of neighboring nodes. The primary result of DEAP is that it enables a flexible range of tradeoffs between the packet delay and the energy use. Therefore, DEAP supports delay sensitive applications of heterogeneous sensor and actor networks. DEAP is scalable to the change in network size, node type, node density and topology. DEAP accommodates seamlessly such network changes, including the presence of actors in heterogeneous sensor networks. Indeed DEAP takes advantage of actor nodes, and uses their resources when possible, thus reducing the energy consumption of sensor nodes. The performance of DEAP remains very good even in large networks, and it scales with density. Through analysis and simulation evaluations, we show that DEAP improves the packet delay and system lifetime compared to other protocols.