Balancing energy consumption to maximize network lifetime in data-gathering sensor networks

Unbalanced energy consumption is an inherent problem in wireless sensor networks characterized by multihop routing and many-to-one traffic pattern, and this uneven energy dissipation can significantly reduce network lifetime. In this paper, we study the problem of maximizing network lifetime through balancing energy consumption for uniformly deployed data-gathering sensor networks. We formulate the energy consumption balancing problem as an optimal transmitting data distribution problem by combining the ideas of corona-based network division and mixed-routing strategy together with data aggregation. We first propose a localized zone-based routing scheme that guarantees balanced energy consumption among nodes within each corona. We then design an offline centralized algorithm with time complexity O(n) (n is the number of coronas) to solve the transmitting data distribution problem aimed at balancing energy consumption among nodes in different coronas. The approach for computing the optimal number of coronas in terms of maximizing network lifetime is also presented. Based on the mathematical model, an energy-balanced data gathering (EBDG) protocol is designed and the solution for extending EBDG to large-scale data-gathering sensor networks is also presented. Simulation results demonstrate that EBDG significantly outperforms conventional multihop transmission schemes, direct transmission schemes, and cluster-head rotation schemes in terms of network lifetime.