Real-time power-aware routing in sensor networks

Abstract — Many wireless sensor network applications must resolve the inherent conflict between energy efficient commu-nication and the need to achieve desired quality of service such as end-to-end communication delay. To address this challenge, we propose the Real-time Power-Aware Routing (RPAR) protocol, which achieves application-specified communication delays at low energy cost by dynamically adapting transmission power and routing decisions. RPAR features a power-aware forward-ing policy and an efficient neighborhood manager that are optimized for resource-constrained wireless sensors. Moreover, RPAR addresses important practical issues in wireless sensor networks, including lossy links, scalability, and severe memory and bandwidth constraints. Simulations based on a realistic radio model of MICA2 motes show that RPAR significantly reduces the number of deadlines missed and energy consumption compared to existing real-time and energy-efficient routing protocols. I