Link quality aware and content centric data aggregation in lossy wireless networks

In low-power and lossy wireless networks, message delivery could be jeopardized by factors such as channel conditions, noise, interference etc. This can lead to communication retransmissions, resulting in significant energy depletion and consequently consumes limited on-node energy resources. This paper elaborates on a two-pronged approach to improve energy efficiency and reliability of communications: A) the application of content-centric data aggregation (pre-processing of correlated information) at each node to reduce traffic volume, and b) the use of link quality information to estimate local network lifetime while routing traffic. A novel objective function is proposed which ties the two together and findings from a performance evaluation are presented. It is shown that the proposed mechanism is able to achieve significant energy savings and prolongs the network lifetime in energy constrained multi-hop networks with lossy wireless links.