CrossWalk: A novel cross-layer random walk data dissemination in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

This paper introduces CrossWalk, a novel integrated cross-layer medium access control/routing protocol based on a receiver-oriented contention resolution mechanism for data dissemination in wireless sensor networks. Traditional approaches for data dissemination such as flooding or simple random walks suffer respectively from a large message forwarding overhead and an excessively long cover time. In this scope, CrossWalk, based on biased random walks, aims to achieve a convenient cover time at the cost of a reasonable overhead. In particular, we demonstrate by an analytical study that the proposed biasing strategy based on a decreasing truncated geometric distribution over a fixed contention window favors a data packet to progress-in a unicast fashion-towards nodes in less explored vicinity by making them more likely to win the contention for the medium access. We therefore show by extensive simulations that CrossWalk outperforms common random walks in terms of partial coverage and efficient network resources consumption by making less redundant message transmissions.