Energy-aware transmission scheme for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed a technique to extend the network lifetime of a wireless sensor network, whereby each sensor node decides whether to transmit a packet or not and with what range to transmit the packet. A sensor node makes this decisions based on its own energy resource and the information contained in each packet. The information content in each packet is determined through a system of rules describing prospective events in the sensed environment, and how important such events are. While the most important packets are propagated by virtually all sensor nodes and with different transmission ranges depending on their battery life, low importance packets are propagated by only sensor nodes that have high energy reserves and with greater transmission ranges due to high reserves. The result show that by adjusting the transmission ranges based on energy reserves, a considerable increase of lifetime is achieved. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.