Energy-efficient routing in wireless sensor networks for delay sensitive applications

The advances of wireless technologies at a rapid pace along with sophisticated embedded computing systems have led to the emergence of un-attended Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Regardless of the energy limitations in the sensor nodes; WSNs have enabled a plethora of new services and applications. While several energy efficient routing protocols have been proposed to address the energy limitations of the sensors, they tend to increase the end-to-end delay involved in data transmission to the control center. This leads to the Delay-Constrained, Energy-Efficient Routing Problem (DCEERP) in many WSNs applications.;This thesis work proposes a novel energy efficient routing strategy to solve DCEERP that employs topology control and also models the channel access delays caused by 802.11 like MAC layers. This in turn, allows us to obtain better estimates for the end-to-end delays of the paths. Experimental results show that the proposed solution is effective in satisfying the delay constraint and also reduces the energy consumption in transmission when compared to conventional solutions. Also, the proposed solution solves the DCEERP for more generalized communication patterns thereby allowing better utilization of network resources.