Chase: Taming concurrent broadcast for flooding in asynchronous duty cycle networks

Abstract

Asynchronous duty cycle is widely used for energy constraint wireless nodes to save energy. The basic flooding service in asynchronous duty cycle networks, however, is still far from efficient due to severe packet collisions and contentions. We present Chase, an efficient and fully distributed concurrent broadcast layer for flooding in asynchronous duty cycle networks. The main idea of Chase is to meet the strict signal timing and strength requirements (e.g., Capture Effect) for concurrent transmission while reducing contentions and collisions. We propose a distributed random inter-preamble packet interval adjustment approach to constructively satisfy the requirements. Even when requirements cannot be satisfied due to physical constraints (e.g., the difference of signal strength is less than a 3 dB), we propose a light-weight signal pattern recognition based approach to identify such a circumstance and extend radio-on time for packet delivery. We implement Chase in TinyOS and TelosB platform and extensively evaluate its performance. The implementation does not have any specific requirement on the hardware and can be easily extended to other platforms. The evaluation results also show that Chase can significantly improve flooding efficiency in asynchronous duty cycle networks.