Hierarchical mesh routing implementation for indoor data collection

Abstract

We have implemented a hierarchical mesh (HM) based routing protocol for data collection in an indoor environment. Devices are autonomously organized into a hierarchy based on a metric used to evaluate links between two devices, and end-to-end paths. The HM-based routing is implemented at the link layer over the MAC layer in a working WPAN (IEEE 802.15.4) and uses MAC addresses. A mesh root initiates the construction of the HM and acts as the data collector of the network. Data collection can begin as soon as the HM topology is established and does not require additional route establishment signaling. Devices select a next hop from a neighbor table and do not need to have knowledge of the entire path. We observe efficient routing with limited link layer retransmissions through our experiments. Additionally, the use of data concatenation reduces the number of transmissions in the network as well as the probability of collisions, providing a promising solution in high density and high traffic applications.