To Shift or not To Shift: Maximizing the Efficiency of A Wireless Sensor Network.
Chabli Boler, Sumanth Yenduri, Wei Ding, Louise A. Perkins, John Harris · International Journal of Networked Computing and Advanced Information Management · 2011
In this paper, we address the efficient utilization of a wireless sensor network (WSN) to improve the overall data throughput and to cut down the cost of running it. Sensor nodes closest to the sink node expend more energy as they send more routing messages, which decreases their life and introduces dead spots. Having dead spots will lead to the eventual isolation of the sink nodes from the network. We attempt to solve this problem by distributing multiple sink nodes. This will enable us to utilize the network at its maximal capacity as the sensor nodes start to die off. By adding multiple sink nodes, we will switch between them and choose the one that will yield optimal network coverage after the initial sink node is no longer viable to service or cannot service the network optimally. However, at any point of time, there will be only one active sink node. We will explore in three ways. First, we use a single sink node (with no switching) until it is isolated from the network. Second, we use a combination of highest percentage of network coverage combined with the highest areas of node density on the network to derive the optimal use of the network. We call this the Cluster Algorithm for Sink Selection (CASS). Finally, we try to keep the network optimal by switching to the sink node that is farthest from the current sink (assuming to gain the maximum network reach). We will analyze and discuss our findings with respect to the data through put and life of the network.