A Self-Organizing Communication Mechanism using Traveling Wave Phenomena for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a self-organizing communication mechanism for a wireless sensor network where a large number of sensor nodes are deployed. To accomplish application-oriented periodic communication without any centralized controls, we adopt traveling wave phenomena of a pulse-coupled oscillator model by regarding sensor nodes as oscillators and the emission of radio signals as firing. We first investigat conditions of a phase-response curve to attain wave-formed firing patterns regardless of the initial phase of oscillators. We adopte the derived phase-response curve to accomplish the desired form of message propagation through local and mutual interactions among neighboring sensor nodes. Through simulation experiments, we confirm that our mechanism can gather or diffuse information effectively in accordance with the application's requirements.