Infuse: A TDMA based data dissemination protocol for sensor networks

Reliable dissemination of bulk data is one of the important problems in sensor networks. For example, programming or upgrading the software in sensors at run-time requires reliable dissemination of a new program across the network. In this paper, we present Infuse, a time division multiple access (TDMA) based reliable data dissemination protocol. Infuse takes two input parameters: i. the choice of the recovery algorithm (from one of two presented in this paper) to deal with unexpected channel errors (e.g., message corruption, varying signal strength), and ii. whether a sensor should listen only to a subset of its neighbors to reduce the amount of active radio time. Based on these parameters, we obtain four possible versions of Infuse. We compare the performance of these versions to assist a designer in selecting the appropriate version based on the network characteristics. Furthermore, we demonstrate Infuse in the context of network programming.