Energy Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks are an emerging area of Communication technology. These networks are made up of tiny wireless sensors that collect and transmit data toward a sink node(s). Energy efficiency in sensor networks is one of the most important considerations in network design. This is because of the low energy resources that can be supplied with these sensor nodes.

In this work, we describe methods to increase the lifetime of sensor networks using a hybrid routing scheme. Our routing scheme uses a probabilistic method of routing to transmit data from the sensor nodes to a sink. This scheme incorporates link usage probabilities and energy metrics to prevent failure of nodes due to their excessive usage. In addition, it also incorporates angular routing which forwards packets only to neighboring sensor nodes in assigned conical regions to prevent unnecessarily lengthy routes. Our scheme bounds routing delays in a predetermined manner to ensure that time critical data is not rendered obsolete.

There are regions of sensor networks that are more vulnerable to outages, called hotspots. We also propose a differential method of deployment of sensor nodes to prevent network partitions around hotspots. This scheme ensures that there are no local outages that might create a network partition thereby isolating pockets of nodes from transmitting their data seamlessly to a central processor.

In summary, we demonstrate improved performance in comparison with other schemes. We also show that our scheme is more successful in delaying network partitions and in enhancing the lifetime of the network.