DRCS: A Distributed Routing and Channel Selection scheme for multi-channel wireless sensor networks

We propose a joint channel selection and quality aware routing scheme for multi-channel wireless sensor networks to improve the network lifetime. A data collection traffic pattern is assumed, where all sensor nodes perform periodic sensing and forward data to a centralized base station (sink). The proposed scheme achieves improvement of the battery lifetime by reducing the energy consumed from overhearing and also by dynamically balancing the battery lifetimes of nodes. Performance evaluations are presented from experimental studies as well as from extensive simulation studies to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.