Distributed Energy-Aware Reliable Routing and TDMA Link Scheduling in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Prolonging the network lifetime is a critical challenge in the wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Routing and link scheduling can achieve the objective but few works combine them together to get better performance. In this paper, we study the distributed joint routing and link scheduling for WSNs to extend their lifetime. Using a mathematical formulation, we present a routing algorithm to guarantee three quality of service (QoS) requirements: delay, link reliability and energy-efficiency, simultaneously. Unlike the previous literatures in which all the nodes use the same time frame length, we develop a TDMA link scheduling that determines the frame length of each node by negotiating with neighbors. The interference-free timeslot is allocated to a link under the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) model. We prove the correctness of the routing and the scheduling and analyze the complexity of the algorithms. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other algorithms and can effectively maximize the network lifetime.