Quasi-bottleneck nodes: A potential threat to the lifetime of wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Enlightened by the congestion linkage in the traditional Internet, the novel concept of bottleneck node is proposed in this paper, which is crucial to the lifetime of the wireless sensor network deployed randomly. Due to the computation complexity and the operational deployment, the quasi-bottleneck node is presented to replace the theoretical bottleneck node in the practical scenario. Theoretical analysis shows the probability of the presence of quasi-bottleneck nodes stands at high level and an algorithm to find out this kind of nodes is presented. Simulation proves the correctness of the algorithm and shows the effect of these nodes on the network behavior, such as energy consumption and packet lost rate. At last, two effective solutions to decrease the energy consumption of the quasi-bottleneck nodes are presented. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.