Impacts of structural factors on energy consumption in cluster-based wireless sensor networks: a comprehensive analysis

摘要

Limited energy is the major driving factor for research on wireless sensornetworks. Clustering alleviates this energy shortage problem by reducing datatraffic conveyed over the network and therefore several clustering methods areproposed in the literature. Researchers put forward their methods by makingserious assumptions such as always locating single sink at one side of thetopology or making clusters near to the sink with smaller sizes. However, tothe best of our knowledge, there is no comprehensive research that investigatesthe effects of various structural alternatives on energy consumption ofwireless sensor networks. In this paper, we thoroughly analyse the impact ofvarious structural approaches such as cluster size, number of tiers in thetopology, node density, position and number of sinks. Extensive simulationresults are provided. The results show that the best performance about