Efficient Cluster-Based Sleep Scheduling for M2M Communication Network

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication networks comprise a large number of machine-type communication (MTC) devices such as sensors, radio frequency identification readers, and smart meters. Thus, M2M networks are becoming popular in real-time monitoring, surveillance, and security applications. Scheduling the active and idle states of MTC devices is significantly important to achieve a longer network lifetime and reduce collision during data transmission. Existing node sleep scheduling schemes are mainly designed to reduce the energy consumption of MTC devices. These schemes do not support mobility of MTC devices and thus cannot be used in mobility-centric M2M applications. Thus, we propose a cluster-based energy-efficient, mobility-centric node scheduling scheme for M2M (CENM) communication networks. The proposed CENM scheduling scheme provides (i) network coverage by keeping a minimum number of MTC devices in active state and (ii) fault tolerance by selecting alternative cluster heads and member nodes. Simulation results show that the CENM scheduling scheme is more reliable than the existing CCNS scheduling scheme since the first node in CENM scheme fails much later than that in CCNS scheduling scheme. Simulation results also show that the CENM scheduling scheme outperforms the CCNS, LEACH-M and LEACH-ME scheduling schemes in terms of network energy consumptions, network lifetime, and total message transmissions.