• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.47-59
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• 2009

Due to the application-specific nature of wireless sensor networks, the sensitivity to such a requirement as data reporting latency may vary depending on the type of applications, thus requiring application-specific algorithm and protocol design paradigms which help us to maximize energy conservation and thus the network lifetime. In this paper, we propose a novel delay-adaptive sensor scheduling scheme for energy-saving data gathering which is based on a two phase clustering (TPC). The ultimate goal is to extend the network lifetime by providing sensors with high adaptability to the application-dependent and time-varying delay requirements. The TPC requests sensors to construct two types of links: direct and relay links. The direct links are used for control and forwarding time critical sensed data. On the other hand, the relay links are used only for data forwarding based on the user delay constraints, thus allowing the sensors to opportunistically use the most energy-saving links and forming a multi-hop path. Simulation results demonstrate that cluster-based delay-adaptive data gathering strategy (CD-DGS) saves a significant amount of energy for dense sensor networks by adapting to the user delay constraints.