Grid-Based Hybrid Network Deployment Approach for Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) empower applications for critical decision-making through collaborative computing, communications, and distributed sensing. However, they face several challenges due to their peculiar use in a wide variety of applications. One of the inherent challenges with any battery operated sensor is the efficient consumption of energy and its effect on network lifetime. In this paper, we introduce a novel grid-based hybrid network deployment (GHND) framework which ensures energy efficiency and load balancing in wireless sensor networks. This research is particularly focused on the merge and split technique to achieve even distribution of sensor nodes across the grid. Low density neighboring zones are merged together whereas high density zones are strategically split to achieve optimum balance. Extensive simulations reveal that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art techniques in terms of load balancing, network lifetime, and total energy consumption.