An efficient multi-channel communications scheme for wireless sensor network

Abstract—This paper presents a multi-channel communica-tions system for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), referred to as Load-adaptive practical multi-channel communications (LPMC). LPMC estimates the active load of a channel at the sink, and dynamically adds or removes channel based on the estimated load. The nodes in a path use the same channel; and therefore, they do not need to switch channels to receive or forward packets. Furthermore, LPMC updates the routing path to balance the loads of the channels. LPMC is evaluated by simulation in NS-2, and the results demonstrate that it can effectively increase the channel utilization and network throughput, and decrease the delay. I