DATA GATHERING ALGORITHMS FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS: A SURVEY

Recent developments in processor, memory and radio technology have enabled wireless sensor networkswhich are deployed to collect useful information from an area of interest. The sensed data must begathered and transmitted to a base station where it is further processed for end-user queries. Since thenetwork consists of low-cost nodes with limited battery power, power efficient methods must be employedfor data gathering and aggregation in order to achieve long network lifetimes. In an environment where ina round of communication each of the sensor nodes has data to send to a base station, it is important tominimize the total energy consumed by the system in a round so that the system lifetime is maximized. Withthe use of data fusion and aggregation techniques, while minimizing the total energy per round, if powerconsumption per node can be balanced as well, a near optimal data gathering and routing scheme can beachieved in terms of network lifetime. Several application specific sensor network data gathering protocolshave been proposed in research literatures. However, most of the proposed algorithms have been someattention to the related network lifetime and saving energy are two critical issues for wireless sensornetworks. In this paper we have explored general network lifetime in wireless sensor networks and made anextensive study to categorize available data gathering techniques and analyze possible network lifetime onthem