Delay Aware Broadcast Forwarding Protocol for Asynchronous Duty-Cycled WSNs

Multi-hop broadcasts are more difficult in duty-cycled wireless sensor networks where each node stays awake only for a fraction of a time interval and neighborhood nodes are not simultaneously awake to receive data. In this paper, we exploit the problem of multi-hop broadcasts in low duty-cycled wireless sensor networks, and propose a delay aware broadcast forwarding protocol called DCEB. DCEB neither assumes time synchronization for sleep scheduling, which requires all neighboring nodes to wake up at the same time, nor assumes duty-cycled awareness, which makes the protocol difficult to use in low duty-cycled operations. The decision conditions of broadcast forwarding time with or without delay constraint are deduced. Experimental results prove that DCEB cuts the energy consumption of a multi-hop broadcast by reducing broadcast costs under the decision conditions.