Efficient scheduling of sporadic tasks for real-time wireless sensor networks

Industrial automation requires hard real-time delivery of data that can be of periodic or sporadic in nature. It is challenging to ensure hard real-time delivery of periodic and sporadic data to a multi-hop away destination in a bandwidth constrained environment, such as wireless sensor networks. In this regard, research has been done for joint scheduling of periodic and sporadic data delivery using the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. However, delivery to a destination that is multiple hops away has not been handled. Moreover, the IEEE 802.15.4 standard compliance is not fully taken care of. This study proposes a novel communication protocol that is IEEE 802.15.4 standard compliant, for real-time delivery of sporadic and periodic data to a destination that is multiple hops away. Implicit decisions at various nodes result in the minimal increase in the control traffic and reduced energy dissipation. The proposed protocol is tested using the OPNET simulator and the correctness is proven through a multitude of simulation results.