A Novel Dynamically Duty-Cyclable, Low Power UWB Impulse Radio Based Event Communication

In this paper we present a simple methodology that utilizes the timing-bins in a globally synchronized wireless sensor network to broadcast event information throughout the network. The proposed scheme enables classification as well as per node localization of an event by using bins as hop-counts. A simple implementation of immediate neighborhood validation is also proposed to prevent false-trigger. The neighborhood validation scheme enables self-healing of a faulty sensor node and can be disabled by incorporating self-validation. The proposed schemes are designed to be used in combination with impulse based UWB systems, and help reduce the need for complex MAC/Routing based packet communication in these networks. The proposed scheme implements dynamic duty-cycling as well as dynamic message sizing, ensuring low power consumption during idle as well as event communication phases. A further extension of this methodology can also be used for normal peer-peer packet based communication in conjunction with the event classification feature.