Application of Tree Data Structures for Improving Energy Efficiency & Life Time Of Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN): A Critical Study of the State-of-the-Art and Feasibillity For Further Research

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN) are characterized by highly application specific nature, stringent resource constraints, self-organizing, spatio-temporal traffic, and large dynamic topology with several contradicting design goals. Of these design goals, network life time and energy efficiency are considered as of paramount importance. Many existing research works have stressed on developing techniques to extend the network life time and achieve energy efficiency of WSN. Some of these techniques include the application of Tree as a data structure. The authors of this paper has made an attempt to present a critical study of research works which have applied different variants of Trees for extending network life time and energy efficiency. Also, the paper mainly tries to present the theoritical discussion on performance implications of application of variants of trees, advantages, and disadvantages alogn with the causes. The paper further tries to articulate the possible feasibility of the application of Red Black Trees (RBL) in WSN and explain the major constriants in WSN which may bring issues in applying the concepts of RBLs in their original form.