Constructing Maximum-Lifetime Data-Gathering Forests in Sensor Networks

Abstract--Energy efficiency is critical for wireless sensor networks. The data-gathering process must be carefully designed to conserve energy and extend network lifetime. For applications where each sensor continuously monitors the environment and periodically reports to a base station, a tree-based topology is often used to collect data from sensor nodes. In this work, we first study the construction of a data-gathering tree when there is a single base station in the network. The objective is to maximize the network lifetime, which is defined as the time until the first node depletes its energy. The problem is shown to be NP-complete. We design an algorithm that starts from an arbitrary tree and iteratively reduces the load on bottleneck nodes (nodes likely to soon deplete their energy due to high degree or low remaining energy). We then extend our work to the case when there are multiple base stations and study the construction of a maximum-lifetime data-gathering forest. We show th...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TON
• Authors: Yan Wu, Zhoujia Mao, Sonia Fahmy, Ness B. Shroff
• Keywords: Algorithms, Base Stations, Network Lifetime, TON 2010