A comparative study of protocols for efficient data propagation in smart dust networks

Smart Dust is comprised of a vast number of ultra-small fully autonomous computing and communication devices, with very restricted energy and computing capabilities, that co-operate to accomplish a large sensing task. Smart Dust can be very useful in practice i.e. in the local detection of a remote crucial event and the propagation of data reporting its realization to a control center. In this work, we have implemented and experimentally evaluated four protocols (PFR, LTP and two variations of LTP which we here introduce) for local detection and propagation in smart dust networks, under new, more general and realistic modelling assumptions. We comparatively study, by using extensive experiments, their behavior highlighting their relative advantages and disadvantages. All protocols are very successful. In the setting we considered here, PFR seems to be faster while the LTP based protocols are more energy efficient.