ECAB: An Efficient Context-Aware multi-hop Broadcasting protocol for wireless sensor networks

Duty-cycling scheme consists in switching between active and sleeping modes. While this technique is widely exploited in WSNs to reduce power consumption, It raises several challenges especially for broadcast communications. In fact, as many neighboring nodes are involved in the communication, keeping them all active during a specific period of time requires a preliminary synchronization process which is a complex task and causes extra overhead. In this context, we propose an Efficient Context-Aware multi-hop Broadcasting (ECAB) over asynchronous duty cycled networks. ECAB exploits both the neighborhood knowledge and the traffic load conditions to regulate node behaviors and dynamically adjust duty-cycling schedules. Our objective is to reduce energy consumption without performances penalties. Simulation results show that ECAB outperforms RI-MAC and greatly improves energy consumption compared to broadcast under always-on networks with small degradation related to end-to-end delay and packet delivery.