Sequential Clustering-based Beacon Scheduling in Hierarchically-Extended Wireless Sensor Network

In this paper, we propose a new type of beacon scheduling scheme, referred to as a sequential clustering-based beacon scheduling (SCBS), which support efficient beacon slot assignment for hierarchically-extended wireless sensor networks. It is designed especially to minimize the number of beacon slots that are uniquely dedicated to each of CH and GW without any conflict under a single-frequency radio operation throughout network coverage area. In addition to the bandwidth efficiency, it leads to improvement of various performances, e.g., energy efficiency and delay, in both the downstream and upstream under a cluster-based hierarchical topology. It has been shown that SCBS is useful for extending the coverage of various WSN applications, including those covered by the current IEEE 802.15.4 standards