ReapIoT: Reliable, Energy-Aware Network Protocol for Large-Scale Internet-of-Things (IoT) Applications

A new era is emerging where buildings, vehicles, factories, and appliances, among many other entities will communicate with each other over the Internet, with limited or no human interaction. Collectively known as the Internet of Things (IoT), these systems share a common technology foundation. They are built on wireless communication between stationary or mobile large-scale electronic sensor and actuator networks. For the vast majority of IoT applications, energy-efficient operations are a critical requirement since they will use battery-powered devices. Another requirement is communication reliability, due to unattended network operations. We introduce ReapIoT, reliable energy-aware protocol for IoT WSNs. ReapIoT is an energy-efficient network communication protocol that considers reliability as a design parameter and as a constraint. The protocol introduces message classification based on reliability. This is used to implement new energy saving techniques. The protocol also introduces the individualized link power settings algorithm, and the link rating parameter. They are used to optimize the network clusters formation and for intracluster communication, under reliability constraint. Consequently, the protocol optimizes energy consumption while providing a reliable data delivery network.