Gappa: Gossip Based Multi-channel Reprogramming for Sensor Networks

Abstract

Reprogramming the sensor networks in place is an important and challenging problem. One way suggested for reprogramming is with the help of an UAV (Unmanned Ariel Vehicle). To reprogram a sensor network with the help of an UAV, one can either communicate the entire new program to one (or a few) sensor in the field, or let the UAV communicate parts of the code to a subset of sensor nodes on multiple channels at once. In the latter approach, the nodes need to communicate with each other to receive the remaining parts of the program.

In this paper, we propose a protocol for such gossip between nodes. To better utilize the multi-channel resources and reduce contention, our protocol provides a multi-channel sender selection algorithm. This algorithm attempts to ensure that in any neighborhood, at any time, there is at most one sensor transmitting on a given frequency. Moreover, our sender selection algorithm is greedy in that it tries to select the sender that is expected to have the most impact for each channel. Our protocol also conserves energy by putting the nodes that are unlikely to contribute or receive data shortly to “sleep” state. Through simulation, we show that our protocol is faster and more energy efficient than the existing reprogramming approaches that assume that the new program is initially located only on a small set of nodes.

This work was partially sponsored by NSF CAREER CCR-0092724, DARPA Grant OSURS01-C-1901, ONR Grant N00014-01-1-0744, NSF equipment grant EIA-0130724, and a grant from Michigan State University.