A novel technique for low latency data gathering in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper proposes a brand new medium access control (MAC) protocol specifically designed for wireless sensor network applications that require low data latency. Wireless sensor networks use battery-operated computing and sensing devices and its main application is environmental monitoring. The proposed protocol uses novel techniques to offer a low end-to-end data transmission latency from the furthest away nodes to the sink in a unique working cycle while offering a low-duty-cycle operation. Key features of this protocol include a synchronised sleep schedule to reduce control overhead along with a mechanism to avoid overhearing unnecessary traffic and elude collisions.