Cross-Layer Design for Information Dissemination in Wireless Sensor Networks: State-of-the-Art and Research Challenges:Technical rept. series

摘要

In recent years, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged as a highly important research area because of the rapid advances in hardware, sensor and wireless networking technologies. These advances will also enable WSNs to become key to true ubiquitous computing systems in the near future. However, due to resource constraints and unreliability of wireless networks, efficient communication protocols for WSNs are needed. But, the majority of proposed communication protocols in WSNs are developed for specific networking layers based on traditional layered protocol architecture. Such protocols may successfully improve energyefficiency for each specific layer in WSNs communication but they are not linked together to fully optimizing the overall network performance while minimizing the energy consumption. Thus, it is essential to design a flexible communication protocol using cross-layer techniques which can significantly improve energy conservation for information dissemination in WSNs.