Title: A novel protocol of energy-constrained sensor network for emergency monitoring

Authors: Tong Wang; Yonghong Zhang; Ying Cui; Yucai Zhou

Addresses: College of Information and Communication Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China ' College of Information and Communication Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China ' College of Information and Communication Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China ' School of Energy and power, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha 410076, China

Abstract: The wide employment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is hampered by the limited energy constraints of the sensor nodes. Although HEED algorithm leads to a stable distribution of cluster heads, the 'hot zone' and 'isolated cluster' problems remain. For this reason, a routing protocol based on non-uniform hierarchical topologies is proposed (HEEDNH) in this work. By this algorithm, suitable cluster headsets can be obtained, with reduced energy consumption in message broadcasting and balanced cluster nodes and 'isolated clusters' can be eliminated. In the stable stage, an algorithm for emergency monitoring is proposed, which can achieve real-time processing of monitored data and timely feedback to the base station. Finally, a non-uniform layered routing strategy is proposed to solve 'hot zone' problem. Simulation results and theoretical analysis show that the proposed algorithm can increase network lifetime efficiently and make the network better fit emergency monitoring than the traditional protocol.

Keywords: clustering mechanism; non-uniform hierarchical topologies; inter-clustering communication; energy balance; emergency monitoring; energy constraints; wireless sensor networks; WSNs; energy consumption; non-uniform layered routing; simulation; network lifetime.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2014.063893

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2014 Vol.15 No.3, pp.171 - 182

Received: 01 Feb 2014
Accepted: 01 Feb 2014
Published online: 24 Jul 2014 *

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