A Lightweight Network Repair Scheme for Data Collection Applications in ZigBee WSNs

Abstract

Data collection is a fundamental operation in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In [4], a quick convergecast solution is proposed for data collection in a ZigBee beacon-enabled tree-based WSN. However, it does not consider the network repair issue. When a ZigBee router loses its link to its parent, all its descendants have to rejoin the network. The rejoining procedure is time-consuming and may incur high communication overheads. The proposed network repair scheme consists of a regular repair and an instant repair schemes. Periodically, the network coordinator can issue regular repair to refresh the network (so as to keep the network in good shape). During normal operations, if a router loses its parent, it tries instant repair to reconnect to a new parent. Our design thus improves over ZigBee in that nodes can continue their operations even during instant repair.