Comparison of Energy Efficient Data Transmission Approaches for Flat Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In this paper we have analyzed energy efficient neighbour selection algorithms for routing in wireless sensor networks. Since energy saving or consumption is an important aspect of wireless sensor networks, its precise usage is highly desirable both for the faithful performance of network and to increase the network life time. For this work, we have considered a flat network topology where every node has the same responsibility and capability. We have compared two energy efficient algorithms and analyzed their performances when all sensor nodes in a network have either homogeneous or heterogeneous energy with increase in number of nodes, time rounds and node failures. Wireless sensor networks consist of number of small nodes deployed in an area under supervision. Each node has limited storage, computational and sensing capability and limited energy resource, as nodes are battery operated. Since energy is the main concern in wireless sensor networks (WSN) to maximize the performance and to increase the lifetime of a network, various approaches are implemented to reduce energy consumption in a network. Most of the energy is consumed during idle period and during transmission of data from one node to another i.e. routing. An efficient media access control (MAC) and routing protocol should be designed to save energy. While MAC protocol targets at reduction of energy in scanning and accessing the channel, routing protocol helps to reduce the energy requirement for end-to-end transmission. In WSN, there are number of routing protocols that have been proposed for different network criteria. Based on the network topology WSN protocols have been categorized as - flat network protocols and hierarchical protocols as shown in Figure 1. Protocols that fall under hierarchical class select one head amongst all and form a hierarchy (1). This hierarchy may be a cluster, a chain or a grid. Cluster head or a leader collects the information from all the other nodes in its region and sends it to the sink node or gateway node. Some examples are low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH), power efficient gathering in sensor information systems (PEGASIS), virtual grid architecture (VGA), etc. The work presented in this paper considers flat protocols and thus we are not including descriptions of hierarchical protocols and will only be