A Review on Conservation of Energy in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

This paper is a review on energy conservation in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Due to the nature of wireless sensor nodes in terms of deployment and their common usage in terrains with limited access, recharging or replacing sensor nodes batteries may be difficult. This paper examined various sources of energy in WSNs Battery, energy harvesting and energy transference. Also, various energy usage operations and energy wastage activities in WSNs were examined, and comparisons of different routing protocols based on network structure, energy dissipation, data communication cost, and entire energy usage in WSNs were itemized. The prospects of the machine learning (ML) approach in addressing energy constraint issues in WSNs were reviewed. This paper recommends a compound approach in routing decisions to maximize energy usage operation and minimize energy wastage activities, consideration for energy harvesting and transference mechanisms, and exploring the potentials in ML algorithms to resolve energy problem in wireless sensor networks.