Dynamic energy aware data gathering strategy for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Energy depletion of sensor nodes is one of the major issues in the wireless sensor networks. Data gathering reveals a convenient solution in order to conserve the sensor nodes energy. It aims at using mobile robots able to visit sensor nodes in order to collect sensed data and carry them to the sink. However, visiting each node may lead to an exponential data latency in the network due to the data collector tour length. So, introducing local relay hop transmissions may be mandatory in order to deliver data to the sink in an acceptable delay. Most of the previous studies have mainly focused on finding an appropriate trade-off between the tour length and the number of local relay hops. However, they neglect the energy depletion of the coordinator nodes, responsible of relaying sensed data into the mobile data collector. Indeed, preserving a uniform energy level constitutes one of the challenging issues in wireless sensor networks. Hence, we propose, in this paper, an enhancement of a bounded relay hop data gathering strategy by ensuring a balanced energy conservation between the active sensor nodes. This study proves that this enhancement contributes significantly to extend the network lifetime.