Maximizing bandwidth in wireless sensor networks using TDMA protocol

Abstract

In one hand, sensor nodes consume low energy when they communicate with TDMA protocol, by eliminating collisions and idle listening. On the other hand, data aggregation algorithms are used to gather and aggregate data in an energy efficient manner so that network lifetime is enhanced. TDMA protocols are more power efficient since nodes in the network can enter inactive state until slot times will be assigned to them. This paper aims to improve both Masri's [1] TDMA protocol in tree-based clustered wireless sensor network (WSN) and our previous solution [2], where the density of the network at the user level is translated by the bandwidth at the network. We have already proven that the used formulas in [1] are false, after that, our simulations results [2] proved the robustness of our formulas and showed that our approach outperforms Masri's one. Nevertheless, we think that aggregating data can improve better the bandwidth assignment. This is the reason why, we present a new approach combining data aggregation with TDMA protocol in WSNs, by minimizing the huge number of transmitted packets to the sink node. Each cluster head (CH) collects and aggregates, (according to an aggregation function) received packets from its child nodes in its cluster, before transmitting the resulting packet (aggregation result as a single packet) to its parent, until the data reaches the sink node.