Idle-Listening Reduction for Data Aggregation in Distributed Sensor Networks

For existing sensor systems, the power consumption of radio for idle listening is in the same order with that for transmitting. In order to prolong the lifetime of sensor networks, the authors propose a reliable and energy-efficient data aggregation scheme (Reed) to reduce idle listening time. In this application scenario, each sensor node periodically detects the environment and is allowed to send one and only one data packet in each sampling period T. Based on this property, the idle listening time can be significantly reduced by node scheduling, while the network routing topology is maintained.