Abstract-Data collection is one of the predominant operations in wireless sensor networks. This paper focuses on the problem of efficient data collection in a setting where some nodes may not possess data each time data is collected. In that case, idle listening slots may occur, which lead to a waste of energy and an increase in latency. To alleviate these problems, successiveslot schedules were proposed by Zhao and Tang (Infocom 2011). In this paper, we introduce a so-called extra-bit technique to reduce idle listening further. Each packet includes an extra bit that informs the receiver whether further data packets will follow or not. The extra-bit technique leads to significantly reduced idle listening and improved latency in many cases. We prove that every successive-slot schedule is also an extra-bit schedule. We then consider the special case of linear networks and prove that the optimal length of a successive-slot schedule (or extra-bit schedule) is 4N − 6 time slots, where N ≥ 3 is the number of nodes excluding the sink. Then the proposed extra-bit technique is compared with the successive-slot technique with respect to the expected amount of idle listening, and it is shown that the extra-bit technique reduces idle listening substantially.

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