The Announcement Layer: Beacon Coordination for the Sensornet Stack

Sensornet protocols periodically broadcast beacons for neighborhood information advertisement, but beacon transmissions are costly when power-saving radio duty cycling mechanisms are used. The authors show that piggybacking multiple beacons in a single transmission significantly reduces transmission costs and argue that this shows the need for a new layer in the sensornet stack - an announcement layer - that coordinates beacons across upper layer protocols. An announcement layer piggybacks beacons and coordinates their transmission so that the total number of transmissions is reduced.