An Optimal Deployment of Multiple Sink Nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks

摘要

The energy consumption of sensor node is critical issue in a large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Multi-hop communication to single sink node is the main factor to cause to exhaust energy. These nodes closer to the sink node use up their energy more quickly than others because of relaying more packets. So, the connectivity holes and coverage holes will emerge around the sink node. In order to elongate the network lifetime, it is required to reduce the hops or distances from sensor node to sink node. An efficient method is deploying multiple sinks instead of one. However, it remains largely unexplored that how many sinks we deployed is best on minimizing network cost and maximizing network lifetime. This paper focuses on lifetime and cost in wireless sensor networks and presents a method to determine the optimal number of sink nodes by computing an important metric, the ratio of lifetime to cost (RLC). We also show the number of sink node n is related with the cost of sensor node and sink node, the network scale, the number of sensor nodes which are within one hop from sink node and the transmitting power of sensor node. Finally, the simulation results are shown to illustrate the correctness of theoretical conclusion.