Lifetime aware deployment of k base stations in WSNs

Abstract

In WSNs (wireless sensor networks), sensor nodes are typically battery powered. The number of base stations and their locations have significant impacts on the lifetime of a WSN. We study two multiple base station deployment problems. The first problem is to deploy k static base stations in a WSN such that the lifetime of the WSN is maximised. The second problem is to deploy k mobile base stations in a WSN such that the lifetime of the WSN is maximised. We propose a unified heuristic for both problems. In the special case of one static base station, we propose an optimal, polynomial time algorithm. In the special case of one mobile base station, we present an efficient heuristic. We have simulated our optimal algorithm, our heuristics, and the MinDiff-RE heuristic proposed by Azad and Chockalingam. The simulation results show that our heuristic for a single mobile base station prolongs the lifetime of a WSN by 253% on average compared to our optimal algorithm for a single static base station, and our heuristic for multiple mobile base stations performs 40% better than the MinDiff-RE heuristic on average.