As a contention-free channel access protocol, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) is widely applied in Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs) due to ease of implementation. TDMA scheduling in EH-WSNs faces the problem of low channel utilization since time slots assigned to some nodes may not be used by them due to shortage of energy or data. It is important to design TDMA scheduling schemes that enhance channel utilization. In this paper, the Fixed Frame Size Scheme (FFSS) and the Adaptive Frame Size Scheme (AFSS) are proposed to improve channel utilization of EH-WSNs. The FFSS aims at the optimal TDMA slot assignment for the TDMA scheduling with fixed frame size, and the AFSS considers the TDMA with variable frame size and targets both the optimal frame size and the optimal slot assignment. The optimization problems maximizing channel utilization are formulated for the FFSS and the AFSS, respectively, which take the upcoming energy and data into account. The optimization problems are transformed into assignment-like problems and solved by the Hungarian-based algorithm in polynomial time. Simulation results indicate that the proposed FFSS and AFSS can considerably improve channel utilization in the EH-WSNs compared with the existing TDMA scheduling schemes.
INTRODUCTIONBeing main components of the Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been widely deployed. The drawback of inconvenient replacing battery in the traditional WSNs is remedied by energy-harvesting technique, which brings in various Energy-Harvesting WSNs (EH-WSNs) [1]. Nodes in the EH-WSNs can gain sustainable operation by scavenging energy from ambient energy sources [2-4], including radio frequency, sun light, wind, etc. Channel access or medium access schemes in the EH-WSNs can be classified as contention-free and contention-based [5]. The representatives of contention-free and contentionbased schemes are Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) and Carrier Sensing Multiple Access/Colission Avoidance (CSMA/CA), respectively. In addition to easy implementation, TDMA has advantages of collision-free, energy-efficient, andThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.