Abstract: Data collection is one of the basic functions of wireless sensor networks and has been applied to environmental monitoring. How to reduce power consumption and prolong the network lifetime is the frontier issue. This paper proposes DRAD, a data collection routing algorithm based on asynchronous dutycycle in wireless sensor networks. The asynchronous dutycycle avoids the consumption caused by time synchronization. Nodes only maintain the time differences from neighbors. So the network lifetime can be significantly prolonged through the asynchronous dutycycle. The duty cycles is used to measure energy consumption in experiments. The results show that DRAD performs in a stable range of low duty cycles and is effective in minimizing energy consumption and prolonging network lifetime.

Key words: wireless sensor networks, data collection, asynchronous dutycycle, time difference modification