A coverage algorithm for intermittently connected delay tolerant wireless sensor networks

Abstract

This work presents a packet drop solution applied to delay tolerant wireless sensor networks. In such networks, when the storage capacity of a node is limited compared to the amount of data to collect, it is common to apply some packet drop strategy based on network layer aspects only. However, such strategies are not suitable for monitoring applications of WSNs where data quality is essential. Alternatively, we propose a drop policy based on global network coverage where the packets that contribute less to the overall network view are chosen to be dropped. In order to evaluate our solution, we executed and compared it with other algorithms in literature. We modelled and simulated scenarios where different events occur. The results show that the algorithm based on network coverage is better than common drop strategies.