A Wakeup Scheme for Sensor Networks: Achieving Balance between Energy Saving and End-to-end Delay

Energy saving is a critical task for sensor networks with limited energy supply. Wakeup schemes that turn off sensors' radio when communication is not necessary have great potential in energy saving. However, existing wakeup schemes encounter critical tradeoffs between energy saving and wakeup latency, and little attention has been paid to reducing the packet end-to-end delay while preserving the energy saving capability. We argue that a long delay can be detrimental for large sensor networks. This paper proposes a wakeup scheme that helps to achieve the balance between energy saving and end-to-end delay. The conditions under which the proposed scheme can show improvement are identified.