An Autonomous Method for Aggregating and Repairing Paths in Sensor Networks

In a sensor network, saving electronic power is an important issue. This is because sensor nodes would be battery-driven and it is not practical to exchange or recharge a battery for hundreds or more sensor nodes. Therefore many studies on expanding sensor network´s lifetime have been performed. We focus on autonomous/adaptive routing for sensor networks to expand the networks lifetime. In this paper, we propose an autonomous method for aggregating and repairing paths in sensor networks. In the proposed method, a sensor node broadcasts a special message when the sensor node´s battery has run out. The special message is a trigger of repairing path process bypassing the node whose battery has run out. We have evaluated the proposed method and simulation results show expanding sensor network´s lifetime with small overhead, i.e. more than twenty data packets are obtained for a control packet