A QoS-aware data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

Data aggregation has been one of important key techniques to increase energy efficiency and bandwidth utilization in wireless sensor networks. There were many research works in this area, but most of them have a disadvantage that cannot optimally meet practical requirements, such as the heterogeneity of application data and latency requirements. In this paper, we propose a novel and simple data aggregation protocol, referred to as Lump, which enables to support QoS requirements of applications. For this purpose, it prioritizes packets for differentiated services and facilitates aggregation decision. Its architecture has a cross-layered design that mitigates overheads of in-network processing, and it is completely an independent module residing on between data-link layer and network layer so that it can be applicable to a variety of applications. Our experiments show that, when an intermediate node has four neighbors, Lump can reduce radio traffic up to 30% while satisfying QoS requirements.