SDC: A Scalable Approach to Collect Data in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we present Scalable Data Collection (SDC) protocol, a tree-based protocol for collecting data over multi-hop, wireless sensor networks. The design of the protocol aims to satisfy the requirements of sensor networks that every sensor transmits sensed data to a sink node periodically or spontaneously. The sink nodes construct the tree by broadcasting a HELLO packet to discover the child nodes. The sensor receiving this packet decides an appropriate parent to which it will attach, it then broadcasts the HELLO packet to discover its child nodes. Based on this process, the tree is quickly created without flooding of any routing packets. SDC avoids periodic updating of routing information but the tree will be reconstructed upon node failures or adding of new nodes. The states required on each sensor are constant and independent of network size, thereby SDC scales better than the existing protocols. Moreover, each sensor can make forwarding decisions regardless of the knowledge on geographical information. We evaluate the performance of SDC by using the ns-2 simulator and comparing with Directed Diffusion, DSR, AODV, and OLSR. The simulation results demonstrate that SDC achieves much higher delivery ratio and lower delay as well as scalability in various scenarios.