Integrated and heuristic methods for maximizing the lifetime of wireless sensor networks with optimal base station location for disaster forecast

Abstract

A wireless sensor network consists of sensor nodes and a base station. While the base station is located in places that people can get to easily, sensors nodes are usually placed evenly in remote areas. By observing environmental data collected by sensor nodes, this system helps anticipating and preventing unexpected disasters such as floods and earthquakes. However, the lifetime of the whole system is unpredictable since wireless nodes have a limited energy source (e.g. batteries) that can run out at any time, while data transmission between nodes takes a huge amount of energy. This paper considers to specify an optimal base station location that provides the longest network lifetime. A modified integrated greedy method and a heuristic and greedy combinational method are proposed for finding the base station location. We experimented and compared to existing methods over 30 randomly created data sets. The experimental results show a significant improvement in the quality of the found base station locations.