A Transmission Power Control Mechanism for 802.15.4+RPL-Operated Wireless Sensor Network

Background and Objective: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are typically formed by one or more sink nodes and a large number of sensor nodes that are able to sense, process and transmit data. Topology control mechanisms can be utilized to guarantee requirements such as connectivity, coverage, delay and network lifetime in WSNs. One effective way to control the topology is adjusting transmission power level in each node according to the link quality conditions. The goal of Transmission Power Control (TPC) is to set the transmission range of each node by adjusting its transmission power level. Methods: In this paper, we investigate TPC in 802.15.4+RPL WSNs. In our proposed mechanism, each node dynamically adjusts its transmission power based on channel conditions before sending every data and ACK packet. Result and Conclusion: The results of extensive simulations confirm that our power control method improves network performance, especially in terms of network lifetime, which is an essential issue in WSNs.