Is sensor deployment using Gaussian distribution energy balanced?

Abstract

Energy is one of the scarcest resources in wireless sensor network (WSN). One fundamental way of conserving energy is judicious deployment of sensor nodes within the network area so that energy flow remains balanced throughout the network. Node deployment using Gaussian distribution is a standard practice and is widely acceptable when random deployment is used. Initially, an analysis is done to establish that Gaussian distribution based node deployment is not energy balanced. Standard deviation has been identified as the parameter responsible for energy balancing. A deployment strategy is proposed for energy balancing using customized Gaussian distribution by discretizing the standard deviation. Performance of the deployment scheme is evaluated in terms of energy balance and network lifetime. Simulation results demonstrate that proposed deployment strategy significantly outperforms conventional Gaussian distribution based node deployment scheme in terms of the two performance metrics. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.