Non-uniform distribution of multi-hop sensor networks: performance improvement and energy hole mitigation

The authors consider that packet forwarding strategies drastically affect the traffic patterns in multi-hop wireless networks such as wireless sensor networks (WSN). The converge-cast nature of the WSN traffic pattern is an imbalanced pattern, which leads to many issues including: 1- energy holes 2- high delay 3- traffic blockage. In this study, the effects of the node´s density on the total delay, throughput and consumed energy of a WSN is considered. Here the authors demonstrate that under a non-uniform distribution method the WSN encounters much lesser energy holes and prolongs the network life cycle. So Zipf distribution is used and the performance metrics and lifetime of a WSN for uniform and Zipf distribution are compared. The simulation results show that a WSN with Zipf distribution works more energy efficient than a uniform density network. Also the Zipf distribution with different characterising exponent reports a trade-off between network lifetime and end-to-end delay.