Heuristic routing with bandwidth and energy constraints in sensor networks

Abstract

Most of the routing algorithms devised for sensor networks considered either energy constraints or bandwidth constraints to maximize the network lifetime. In the real scenario, both energy and bandwidth are the scarcest resource for sensor networks. The energy constraints affect only sensor routing, whereas the link bandwidth affects both routing topology and data rate on each link. Therefore, a heuristic technique that combines both energy and bandwidth constraints for better routing in the wireless sensor networks is proposed. The link bandwidth is allocated based on the remaining energy making the routing solution feasible under bandwidth constraints. This scheme uses an energy efficient algorithm called nearest neighbor tree (NNT) for routing. The data gathered from the neighboring nodes are also aggregated based on averaging technique in order to reduce the number of data transmissions. Experimental results show that this technique yields good solutions to increase the sensor network lifetime. The proposed work is also tested for wildfire application.