Gathering with Minimum Delay in Tree Sensor Networks

Data gathering is a fundamental operation in wireless sensor networks in which data packets generated at sensor nodes are to be collected at a base station. In this paper we suppose that each sensor is equipped with an half–duplex interface; hence, a node cannot receive and transmit at the same time. Moreover, each node is equipped with omnidirectional antennas allowing the transmission over distance R. The network is a multi-hop wireless network and the time is slotted so that one–hop transmission of one data item consumes one time slot. We model the network with a graph where the vertices represent the nodes and two nodes are connected if they are in the transmission/interference range of each other. Due to interferences a collision happens at a node if two or more of its neighbors try to transmit at the same time. Furthermore we suppose that an intermediate node should forward a message as soon as it receives it. We give an optimal collision free gathering schedule for tree networks whenever each node has at least one data packet to send.