Optimizing the operating time of wireless sensor network

Abstract

A difficult constraint in the design of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is the limited energy resource of the batteries of the sensors. This limited resource restricts the operating time that WSNs can function in their applications. Routing protocols play a major part in the energy efficiency of WSNs because data communication dissipates most of the energy resource of the networks. There are many energy-efficient cluster-based routing protocols to deliver data from sensors to a base station. All of these cluster-based algorithms are heuristic. The significant benefit of heuristic algorithms is that they are usually very simple and can be utilized for the optimization of large sensor networks. However, heuristic algorithms do not guarantee optimal solutions. This article presents an analytical model to achieve the optimal solutions for the cluster-based routing protocols in WSNs.