DQSB: A Reliable Broadcast Protocol Based on Distributed Quasi-Synchronized Mechanism for Low Duty-Cycled Wireless Sensor Networks

In duty-cycled wireless sensor networks, deployed sensor nodes are usually put to sleep for energy efficiency according to sleep scheduling approaches. Any sleep scheduling scheme with its supporting protocols ensures that data can always be routed from source to sink. In this paper, we investigate a problem of multi-hop broadcast and routing in random sleep scheduling scheme, and propose a novel protocol, called DQSB, by quasi-synchronization mechanism to achieve reliable broadcast and less latency routing. DQSB neither assumes time synchronization which requires all neighboring nodes wake up at the same time, nor assumes duty-cycled awareness which makes it difficult to use in asynchronous WSNs. Furthermore, the benefit of quasi-synchronized mechanism for broadcast from sink to other nodes is the less latency routing paths for reverse data collection to sink because of no or less sleep waiting time. Simulation results show that DQSB outperforms the existing protocols in broadcast times performance and keeps relative tolerant broadcast latency performance, even in the case of unreliable links. The proposed DQSB protocol, in this paper, can be recognized as a tradeoff between broadcast times and broadcast latency. We also explore the impact of parameters in the assumption and the approach to get proper values for supporting DQSB.