QoS-aware data report scheduling in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

Data reporting strategy in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks can be differentiated based on task-specific data gathering requirements. This paper presents a novel QoS-aware data report scheduling scheme, called QRS, that offers task-specific sensor node classification and class-based data reporting in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. The QRS scheme performs two-phase scheduling algorithms to provide differentiated quality of service (QoS) to sensor nodes in different classes. In the first phase, time slots are divided into each data reporting round, defined for each class while, in the second phase, the sensor nodes in the same class will be allocated to particular schedules. The predefined number of sensor nodes, which are based on the class that the sensors belongs to, are assigned to the time slot(s). The QRS scheme is scalable as it is operated in a distributed manner and not limited to a specific channel access mechanism such as contention-based and schedule-based channel access.