Close-to-optimal energy balanced data propagation via limited, local network density information
Azzedine Boukerche, Dionysios Efstathiou, Sotiris Nikoletseas, Christoforos Raptopoulos · 2011
We study the problem of energy-balanced data propagation in wireless sensor networks. The energy balance property is crucial for maximizing the time the network is functional, by avoiding early energy depletion of a large portion of sensors. We propose a distributed, adaptive data propagation algorithm that exploits limited, local network density information for achieving energy-balance while at the same time minimizing energy dissipation. We investigate both uniform and heterogeneous sensor placement distributions. By a detailed experimental evaluation and comparison with well-known energy-balanced protocols, we show that our density-based protocol improves energy efficiency significantly while also having better energy balance properties.