Decentralized time-synchronized channel swapping

Abstract

We are working on a new concept for decentralized medium access control (MAC), termed decentralized time-synchronized channel swapping (DT-SCS). Under the proposed DT-SCS and its associated MAC-layer protocol, wireless nodes converge to synchronous beacon packet transmissions across all IEEE802.15.4 channels, with balanced numbers of nodes in each channel. This is achieved by reactive listening mechanisms, based on pulse coupled oscillator techniques. Once convergence to the multichannel time-synchronized state is achieved, peer-to-peer channel swapping can then take place via swap requests and acknowledgments made by concurrent transmitters in neighboring channels. Our implementation of DT-SCS reveals that our proposal comprises an excellent candidate for completely decentralized MAC-layer coordination in WSNs by providing for quick convergence to steady state, high bandwidth utilization, high connectivity and robustness to interference and hidden nodes. The demo will showcase the properties of DT-SCS and will also present its behaviour under various scenarios for hidden nodes and interference, both experimentally and with the help of visualization of simulation results.