STER: A look at Sensor-Triggered communication for wireless networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have become powerful tools for gathering and monitoring environmental data. These networking systems can be utilized for many different applications due to their autonomy, ability to withstand harsh conditions, and the reduced cost associated with their collection of data. These characteristics are beneficial across a wide range of applications including those specific to the military, environmental, industrial, and medical industries. Additionally, they become increasingly more relevant in remote sensing applications where size weight and power trade-offs are of particular importance. Conversely, these applications also demonstrate the Achilles heel of a large percentage of WSNs in that they run on limited power sources. Thus, energy efficiency is a major concern and therefore a significant amount of research has been dedicated to identifying methods of making WSNs as energy efficient as possible. The purpose of this paper is to detail a reactive wireless sensor network protocol that will minimize network overhead and energy consumption in an effort to provide longevity to the overall network. The underlying components of the Sensor-Triggered Efficient Routing protocol, STER, will be covered and the asynchronous handshaking method used to transmit data between the sending and receiving nodes will also be described. The power consumption performance results of STER will then be compared to those obtained from other protocols in the current literature. The data will show that implementation of the STER protocol should result in a wireless sensor network with an increased life span. © 2012 SPIE.

Publication Title

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

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