Analysis of a Self-organizing Algorithm for Time Slot Selection in Schedule-based Medium Access

摘要

To ensure a long-lived network of wireless communicating sensors, it is necessary to have a medium access control protocol that is able to prevent energy-wasting behaviour like idle listening, hidden terminal problem or collision of packets. Schedule-based medium access protocols are in general robust against these effects, but require a mechanism to establish non-conflicting schedules. We present such a scheduling mechanism, which allows wireless sensors to choose a time interval for transmission, which is not interfering or causing collisions with other transmissions. We analyze the scheduling mechanism in the case that many nodes enter the time interval selection procedure simultaneously and potentially multiple selection rounds are required before each node has a non-conflicting schedule. In our proposed solution, we do not assume any hierarchical organization in the network and all operation is localized, making the network self-configuring.