Energy Efficient Data Caching in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Case of Precision Agriculture

Abstract

Implementation of information and control technologies is essential for application areas such as precision agriculture, where Wireless Sensor Networks are deployed. In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), data is collected from the source nodes and routed to the sink. And from the sink, this data is sent to the internet. Energy conservation is paramount during the communication phase in order to prolong the lifetime of the sensor nodes. The main method deployed to conserve energy consists of switching off the nodes transceiver when not transmitting nor receiving packets.

In this project, we introduce a Data Caching Algorithm (DCAL) that optimises the sleep/wake up periods of wireless sensor nodes to achieve low energy consumption and latency. The algorithm was used to analyse data in order to avoid situations of continuously transmitting the same information from the source node to the sink. This approach exploits the duty cycling scheme and operating on top of Media Access Control (MAC). We implement a Data Caching Algorithm (DCAL) in MIXIM (Mixed simulator for wireless and mobile networks using OMNET++ simulation engine) running on OMNET++ (Objective Modular Network Testbed in C++) simulator where different network sizes and simulation times were varied. We compared the performance of our algorithm with Data gathering MAC (DMAC) and Sensor-MAC (SMAC) and results showed that DCAL scheme significantly performs better in energy conservation and achieved a better latency than the DMAC protocol. Further still the DCAL approach performed extremely well in large, random networks.