A Cross-Layer Communication Protocol with Transmission Power Adjustment for Energy Saving in Multi-hop MhWSNs

Abstract

Introducing a cross-layer scheme to optimize energy consumption in multi hop wireless sensor networks (MhWSNs) is a relatively new approach. Moreover and contrarily to the existing cross-layer MhWSNs architectures, this paper deals with a new cross-layer design based on three-ware cross-layer architecture which exploits an inversed interaction between network, link and physical layers. We propose a cross-layer and hybrid energy efficiency protocol (named CL-HEEP) with transmission power adjustment to preserve the energy reserves in multi-hop MhWSNs. The main idea is the use of routing information to dynamically adjust the transceiver transmission power and to establish cross-layer duty-cycling. An additional wake-up radio is also implied by CL-HEEP to preserve the energy while avoiding compulsory wake-up, idle listening, interference, and collision problems. The simulation reveals that CL-HEEP is energy-efficient and able to achieve significant performance improvement compared to other cross-layer protocols.