Directional controlled fusion in wireless sensor networks

Though data redundancy can be eliminated at aggregation point to reduce the amount of sensory data transmissions, it introduces new challenges due to multiple flows competing for the limited bandwidth in the vicinity of the aggregation point. On the other hand, waiting for multiple flows to arrive at a centralized node for aggregation not only uses precious memory to store these flows but also increases the delays of sensory data delivery. While traditional aggregation schemes can be characterized as "multipath converging", this paper proposes the use of "multipath expanding" to solve the above problems by exploiting both data fusion and load balancing. We propose a novel directional-controlled fusion (DCF) scheme, which includes two key algorithms, i.e., directional control and multipath fusion. By adjusting a key parameter named multipath fusion factor in DCF, the trade-offs between multipath-converging and multipath-expanding can be easily achieved, in order to satisfy specific QoS requirements from various applications. We present extensive simulations that verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.