A Survey on Scheduling Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks(WSN) have wide range of application such as traffic analysis, environmental monitoring, industrial process monitoring, and tactical systems. Large-scale wireless sensor networks are expected to play increasingly important role in future civilian and military application. Designing of MAC layer protocol for wireless sensor network is a challenging task due to limited battery power and limited bandwidth. Time Division Multiple Access Protocol solves both problems at the level of MAC layer. Various scheduling method for TDMA protocol with different objective have been proposed for wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we first outline the sensor network properties that are crucial for the design of TDMA protocols and then, we describe several TDMA protocols which are proposed for sensor networks. Finally, we point out open research issue with regard to TDMA protocols.