Heuristic algorithms for real-time data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In sensor networks, energy efficiency is crucial to achieving satisfactory network life. Using the strategy of data aggregation and the technology of smart radio with adjustable transmission power, energy can be saved significantly. In this work we model the real-time requirement in sensor networks as two constraints with the data aggregation tree: node degree bounded and tree height bounded. We state with energy model as the FIRST ORDER RADIO MODEL [4], the maximum node degree of the MST for any graph in a plane is six, and it can be transformed into a MST with maximum node degree as five. Then, we propose three heuristic algorithms to build a MST with hop and degree constraints, namely Node-First Heuristic (NFH), Tree-First Heuristic (TFH), and Hop-Bounded Heuristic (HBH). Simulation results reveal that they are all suitable to solve the real-time data aggregation problem and the performance of NFH is the best.