DESYDE: Decentralized (De)synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks

In the full version of this paper [3] we propose DESYDE: a decentralized approach for coordinating the radio activity of wireless sensor nodes. Inspired by the win-stay lose-shift strategy from game theory, our approach allows individual nodes to schedule their radio transmission, reception and sleeping periods without any form of explicit coordination. We implement DESYDE in the OMNeT++ sensor network simulator and compare its performance to two state-of-the-art scheduling protocols, namely S-MAC and D-MAC. We show that our approach adapts the wake-up cycle of each node to its traffic load and significantly reduces end-to-end communication delays.