Competition: RedNodeBus, Stretching out the Preamble.

A real-time wireless bus based on flooding and the capture effect is proposed to achieve highly reliable broadcast communication in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) working in harsh environments, in a multi-source-to-multisink topology, where multiple hops are required (Fig.). Different sources access the medium without colliding using network-wide predefined time slots and frequency channels. Frequency-, spatialand time-diversities are exploited using redundant retransmissions. Packet deliveries are latency-bounded, and messages are discarded after a predetermined time-to-live; in order to achieve an optimal trade-off between reliability, energy consumption and latency. Furthermore, long packet preambles are used to ease the synchronization requirements and favor the capture effect.