A CTP: An Efficient, Robust, and Reliable Collection Tree Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Collection is a core building block for many sensor network applications. In its simplest use, collection provides an unreliable, datagram routing service that deployments use to gather data [Werner-Allen et al. 2006; Mainwaring et al. 2002; Tolle et al. 2005]. A natural and efficient way to implement collection is by using a tree topology rooted at one or more collection points. Such trees are themselves building blocks for other types of protocols. Tree-based collection protocols provide the topology underlying most point-to-point routing protocols, such as BVR [Fonseca et al. 2005], PathDCS [Ee et al. 2006], and S4 [Mao et al. 2007] as well as transport protocols such as IFRC [Rangwala et al. 2006], RCRT [Paek and Govindan 2007], Flush [Kim et al. 2007], and Koala [Musaloiu-E. et al. 2008]. This paper describes the design and evaluation of a collection protocol that can simultaneously achieve four goals: