Abstract
In wireless sensor networks, node placement plays a significant role in terms of meeting design goals, such as cost effectiveness, connectivity, lifetime, and data latency. In tunnel environments, the energy consumption of sensor nodes and relay nodes is imbalanced because of the long and narrow shape of tunnels. In this article, to reduce the use of extra batteries and the number of forwarding times for a message, we propose a new approach to assist in the placement of relay nodes for two-tier wireless sensor networks in a tunnel environment. The approach proposed is based on the principle that working relay nodes can change approximately at the same time during network operation. It seems the relay nodes move to a new place when they are instead by dormant relay nodes. The approach provides a novel method that has been proved to find optimal places to deploy relay nodes in tunnel environment. Moreover, the approach balances the energy consumption of entire sensor nodes and prolongs the lifetime of entire networks significantly, which is shown in simulations.
Highlights
Wireless multiple-sensor networks are used in a wide variety of applications
When we consider the case in which extra batteries are attached to relay nodes (RNs), the imbalance of energy consumption among sensor nodes’ (SNs) is omitted
We investigated and discussed such a condition and proposed a novel approach called ‘‘virtual movement of RNs’’ based on the concept of changing RNs in each cluster at the same time
Summary
Wireless multiple-sensor networks are used in a wide variety of applications. In most cases, wireless networks are used on the earth’s surface,[1,2] but certain cases require sensors to be deployed underground or in tunnels,[3,4] especially at coal mine. The relay layer is an important layer in the organization They relay signals to sink nodes to save sensor nodes’ (SNs) energy or balance the energy of whole WSNs. Some methods have been proposed to improve the efficiency of relays’ communication to sink.[7] many approaches discuss how to deploy the relay nodes (RNs) to improve the lifetime and QoS of WSNs.[8,9] few studies have considered organization of the relay layer to improve the performance of the SN layer such that the entire network is improved. Based on the multi-hop network model, an approach for RNs in two-tier WSNs is proposed to save the energy of SNs and balance their energy consumption in a tunnel environment. We discuss the system model for the VMRN in section ‘‘Problem and system model.’’ The energy consumption of deployment and a solution to find the optimal result is given in section ‘‘Solution and energy efficiency analyses.’’ the conclusions are presented, and future work is suggested in section ‘‘Conclusion.’’
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