IOANNIS CHATZIGIANNAKIS
Computer Technology Institute, P. O. Box 1122, 26110 Patras, Greece
Dept. of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, 26500 Patras, Greece
TASSOS DIMITRIOU
Athens Information Technology, P. O. Box 68, 19002 Peania, Athens, Greece
MARIOS MAVRONICOLAS
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, CY-1678 Nicosia, Greece
SOTIRIS NIKOLETSEAS
Computer Technology Institute, P. O. Box 1122, 26110 Patras, Greece
Dept. of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, 26500 Patras, Greece
PAUL SPIRAKIS
Computer Technology Institute, P. O. Box 1122, 26110 Patras, Greece
Dept. of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, 26500 Patras, Greece

Received 16 February 2003
Revised 26 September 2003

Smart Dust is comprised of a vast number of ultra-small fully autonomous computing and communication devices, with very restricted energy and computing capabilities, that co-operate to accomplish a large sensing task. Smart Dust can be very useful in practice i.e. in the local detection of a remote crucial event and the propagation of data reporting its realization to a control center. In this work, we have implemented and experimentally evaluated four protocols ( , and two variations of which we here introduce ) for local detection and propagation in smart dust networks, under new, more general and realistic modelling assumptions. We comparatively study, by using extensive experiments, their behavior highlighting their relative advantages and disadvantages. All protocols are very successful. In the setting we considered here, seems to be faster while the based protocols are more energy efficient.

Wireless sensor networks; self-organizing network; propagation protocols