Modeling and analysis of nodal behavior in delay tolerant wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), nodes are often scheduled to alternate between a working mode and a sleeping mode from the energy efficiency point of view. When delay is tolerable, it is not necessary to preserve network connectivity during activity (working or sleeping) scheduling, in order to enable more sensors to be switched to sleeping mode and thus more energy savings. In this paper we model and analyze nodal behavior in such delay-tolerant WSNs (DT-WSNs). We derive the maximum hop count that a routing path is allowed to have in order not to violate a given sensor-to-sink delay constraint, along with extensive simulation results. This research should provide a guidance for designing future DT-WSN routing protocols.