Creating small-world models in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In a wireless sensor network, data communication may have a strong impact on its design since the energy cost related to the transmission is typically much higher than the energy cost to perform data processing. Typically, data communication in a WSN tends to be different from other ldquotraditionalrdquo data networks such as the Internet. In a WSN, there is a special node called sink node that is either the origin or the destination of a message whereas in the other networks data communication happens between arbitrary communicating entities. In this scenario, the theory of complex networks is being employed in the design of wireless sensor networks, which have certain non-trivial topological features. One of the most well-known examples of complex networks is small-world network. In this work, we will use the small-world concept as a modeling technique to build efficient data dissemination in a wireless sensor network. We propose and evaluate two small-world models that can be used in the design of a WSN. In particular the Sink Node as Source/Destination model (SSD) exhibits the most interesting tradeoff between energy and latency allowing the design of strict applications that demand a small latency and energy consumption.