Fault-tolerant scheduling for data collection in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks are expected to be used in many different applications such as disaster relief, environmental control, and intelligent buildings. In this paper, we focus on a sensor network that collects environment data from all sensor nodes periodically. To gather the sensing data quickly and reliably, the scheduling algorithm should be able to coordinate the data transmissions in the network and react to node/link failures effectively. In this paper, we present an innovative scheduling algorithm, Fault-Tolerant Scheduling for data collection (FTS), that leads to short data collection time and high fault tolerance. Our experimental results show that FTS outperforms the DCSB algorithm and exhibits strong fault-tolerant capabilities.