A Comparative Study and Analysis of Data Aggregation Techniques in WSN

Abstract

Background: Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) often consists of large number sensor nodes which co-operatively send sensed data to base station. These networks are used in various applications scenarios such as habitat monitoring, disaster management, security and military, etc. As the sensor nodes are generally operated by battery driven, an efficient utilization of power is essential. Therefore, to enhance the life time of sensor network, power efficient methods has to be adapted to gather and aggregate data. It's mainly because majority of the sensor node energy is consumed during transmission than computation. Data aggregation is one of the widely recognized solutions to gather and reduce the redundant number of packets to be sent to base station by aggregating them. Literature survey shows that several application specific sensor network data gathering protocols exists in enhancing the network lifetime. Methods: This paper provides a comprehensive survey of different data aggregation algorithms in wireless sensor networks. The different algorithm are compared and contrasted based on the performance measures such as network type, mobility, Data (D) or Node (N) centric protocol, computation characteristics, data delivery model, communication pattern, query based support, energy usage and application type. To evaluate the performance of some of the algorithms surveyed in this work, simulation experiments on Matlab were conducted. Results: It was observed from the results that that the network topology has a high impact on the routing protocols to perform data aggregation. There exist few other protocols using contemporary methodologies such as Tree, Grid and Hybrid approaches which are also discussed in this paper. Application: The survey will help to identify the data aggregation algorithm suitable for a specific application.