Energy Efficient Network Structure for Synchronous Preamble Sampling in Wireless Sensor Networks

We propose a new energy efficient network structure for maintaining synchronization in access methods based on Synchronous Preamble Sampling. Our scheme limits the number of synchronization messages and increases network capacity through the use of multiple non-interfering virtual channels. It consists in constructing independent clusters based on the Weakly Connected Dominating Set (WCDS) so that they can use different virtual channels and only need to maintain internal synchronization, while still offering global connectivity. We define a distributed and self-stabilizing algorithm for constructing and maintaining the clusters. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheme has comparable energy consumption to Scheduled Channel Polling, but results in better network capacity. Moreover, it achieves better energy savings and network capacity than recently proposed Crankshaft access method.