Low-power wireless communication is a central building block of cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things. Conventional low-power wireless protocols make avoiding packet collisions a cornerstone design choice. The concept of synchronous transmissions challenges this view. As collisions are not necessarily destructive, under specific circumstances, commodity low-power wireless radios are often able to receive useful information even in the presence of superimposed signals from different transmitters. We survey the growing number of protocols that exploit synchronous transmissions for higher robustness and efficiency as well as unprecedented functionality and versatility compared to conventional designs. The illustration of protocols based on synchronous transmissions is cast in a conceptional framework we establish, with the goal of highlighting differences and similarities among the proposed solutions. We conclude this article with a discussion on open questions and challenges in this research field.

中文翻译：

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低功耗无线中的同步传输

低功耗无线通信是信息物理系统和物联网的核心组成部分。传统的低功耗无线协议使避免数据包冲突成为基础设计选择。同步传输的概念挑战了这一观点。由于碰撞不一定具有破坏性，因此在特定情况下，即使存在来自不同发射器的叠加信号，商品低功率无线电也通常能够接收有用信息。我们调查了越来越多的利用同步传输的协议，与传统设计相比，这些协议具有更高的稳健性和效率，以及前所未有的功能和多功能性。基于同步传输的协议的说明是在我们建立的概念框架中进行的，目的是突出提出的解决方案之间的差异和相似之处。我们以讨论该研究领域的开放性问题和挑战来结束本文。