Hierarchical energy efficient routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

The domain of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is one of the most rapidly growing scientific fields. This is because not only the technological advances have enabled the development of advanced sensor nodes with extremely low cost but the potential applications of such structures are ever growing too. WSNs differ from traditional wireless communication networks in several of their characteristics. One of them is power awareness, due to the fact that the batteries of sensor nodes have a restricted lifetime and are difficult to be replaced. Therefore, all protocols must be designed in such a way as to minimize energy consumption and preserve the longevity of the network. That is why, routing protocols in WSNs aim mainly to accomplish power conservation while in traditional networks they focus primarily on the quality of service (QoS). Recent advances in WSNs have led to many new protocols specifically designed for sensor networks where energy awareness is an essential issue. This work suggests the development of such hierarchical routing protocol, named SHPER (scaling hierarchical power efficient routing), which proves to be particularly effective.