Energy efficient rendezvous protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) represent a set of tiny, inexpensive sensor nodes (SNs). The main source of power supply of SN is usually battery, which has a strictly limited capacity. Lifetime of SN is crucial parameter for energy-efficient applications in WSN. The need for power management becomes the main task intended for SN´s lifetime extension. In this paper we present a modified rendezvous scheme based on implementation of duty-cycling technique. The proposed scheme provides synchronous wake-up times of SNs in fully decentralized way and fast detection of new appended SN. Taking into account working parameters, such as beacon time, duty cycling factor, and quartz oscillator instability, by using the proposed method, a WSN designer can determine with high accuracy the maximal number of active SNs within a WSN, and the optimal beacon period, i.e. to achieve optimal energy efficient application for the WSN.