Effect of Various Topology Control Mechanisms on Maximum Information Flow in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks have overcome limited resources by employing a large number of sensors in coordination. This large number of sensors creates redundancy and resource-underutilization problems, which reduces the network’s effective throughput. Both topology control and network coding mechanisms have been shown to be effective with respect to prolonging network lifetime via both low energy consumption and load balancing. They also improve network capacity and performance via better spatial bandwidth reuse. A basic problem arising when both network coding and topology control mechanisms are employed is the effect of diverse topology control mechanisms on network coding efficiency and maximum information flow. We make a theoretical determination of the achievable maximum multicast information flow after diverse topology control mechanisms. Our simulation results show topology control mechanisms decrease both energy consumption and maximum information flow.