An Energy-Efficient Scheme of Deploying Nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes collect local data and transfer to the base station often relayed by other nodes. If deploying sensor nodes evenly, sensor nodes nearer to the base station will consume more energy and use up their energy faster that reduces system lifetime. By analyzing energy consumption, a density formula of deploying nodes is proposed. The ratio of whole energy of sensor nodes to energy consumption speed of sensor nodes in every area can get consistent if deploying nodes by the density formula, therefore system lifetime is prolonged. Analysis and simulation results show that when communication dominates whole energy consumption and the monitored region is big compared with radio range of sensor node, system lifetime under this scheme can be 3R/(2t) times of that under deploying nodes evenly, where R is radius of the monitored region and t is radio range of sensor node.

1. Introduction

Recently, wireless sensor networks composed of large sensor nodes come to realize [1], [2], [3], [4]. Sensor nodes have very limited processing and communication capabilities. Sensor networks are multi-hop and sensor nodes play a dual role as both data generators and routers [5]. Energy is identified as one of the most crucial resources in sensor networks dual to the difficulty of recharging batteries of thousands of devices in remote or hostile environments [6], [7], [8]. Researches show that energy consumption of sensor node is dominated by communication [4], [9].