Broadcast routing in wireless sensor networks with dynamic power management and multi-coverage backbones

In a wireless sensor network (WSN), nodes are power constrained. As a consequence, protocols must be energy efficient to prolong the network lifetime while keeping some quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. In WSNs, most protocols resort to the broadcast of control messages like, for example, for the topology control (TC) of the network. On its turn, TC itself can be applied to improve the broadcast of data packets in the network, and because only a subset of nodes need to be active at any time, it is possible to extend the network lifetime. We investigate some alternatives to improve broadcasting in WSN for an extended network lifetime. This is accomplished in two ways. First, we adapt the dynamic power management with scheduled switching modes (DPM-SSM) technique to a blind flooding protocol (i.e., FLOOD). To capture the battery capacity recovery effect as a result of applying DPM, we consider a more realistic battery model (i.e., Rakhmatov–Vrudhula battery model). Second, we implement a multi-coverage TC solution for computing an energy efficient broadcast backbone. Extensive simulation results using the NS2 network simulator show that it is possible to extend the network lifetime while keeping good broadcasting performance.