A node scheduling scheme for energy conservation in large wireless sensor networks

TLDR

Wireless sensor networks with many low‑power, short‑lived, unreliable nodes face the challenge of extending system lifetime while preserving sensing coverage and reliability. The authors propose a node‑scheduling scheme that identifies redundant nodes and switches them to a low‑energy off‑duty mode, aiming to preserve original coverage while extending lifetime. Implemented in NS‑2 as an extension of LEACH, the scheme detects redundant nodes and assigns them off‑duty operation to reduce overall energy consumption. Experimental results show that coverage loss is below 1 %, redundancy remains sufficient for reliability, and the scheme significantly extends system lifetime compared to original LEACH. © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract

Abstract In wireless sensor networks that consist of a large number of low‐power, short‐lived, unreliable sensors, one of the main design challenges is to obtain long system lifetime without sacrificing system original performances (sensing coverage and sensing reliability). In this paper, we propose a node‐scheduling scheme, which can reduce system overall energy consumption, therefore increasing system lifetime, by identifying redundant nodes in respect of sensing coverage and then assigning them an off‐duty operation mode that has lower energy consumption than the normal on‐duty one. Our scheme aims to completely preserve original sensing coverage theoretically. Practically, sensing coverage degradation caused by location error, packet loss and node failure is very limited, not more than 1% as shown by our experimental results. In addition, the experimental results illustrate that certain redundancy is still guaranteed after node‐scheduling, which we believe can provide enough sensing reliability in many applications. We implement the proposed scheme in NS‐2 as an extension of the LEACH protocol and compare its energy consumption with the original LEACH. Simulation results exhibit noticeably longer system lifetime after introducing our scheme than before. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.