Lifetime-improved Collection Tree Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are generally deployed in remote sites in order to sense the environment and acquire a set of data useful for analysis, monitoring and optimization algorithms. The use of the WSNs in remote and rugged areas, where battery replacement is not practical, requires extending the network lifetime. The proposed solution in this work, is using low-power Raspberry Pi platform alongside TinyOS operating system. This platform utilizes the novel Lifetime Improved CTP (LICTP), an enhanced version of the Collection Tree Protocol (CTP) presented in this work. The LICTP's performance is analyzed and studied by various simulations using different numbers of MEMSIC IRIS motes. Further, simulation results are verified by an experiment using a network composed of 25 IRIS motes. A demonstration of the LICTP lifetime improvement is presented and evaluated. The proposed WSN improvements achieved a significant enhancement in lifetime duration. For the implemented case-study, the lifetime improvement with LICTP utilization is by a factor of 2.