ABSTRACT
This chapter will introduce a new energy-efficient alternative called pulse switching to replace traditional packet switching. In the proposed pulse switching paradigm, an event can be coded as a single pulse for event monitoring and target tracking applications in sensor networks. Such an event pulse is then transported multihop to a sink while preserving the event’s localization information. The resulting operational lightness, leveraged via zero collision, zero buffering, no addressing, no packet processing, and ultralow communication and energy budgets makes the protocol applicable for severely energy-constrained monitoring applications.
