A Hierarchy Energy Driven Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) one of the critical issues is the maximization of their life time. These networks require a robust architecture that takes into account the energy consumption level of functional constituents and their interdependency. With such an architecture, the overall energy consumption can then be optimized with respect to the constraints of an application. Unlike most current researches that focus on a single aspect of WSNs, this paper presents a Hierarchy Energy Driven Architecture (HEDA) as a new architecture and a novel approach for minimising the total energy consumption of WSNs. The Energy Driven Architecture identifies generic and essential energy-consuming constituents of the network. HEDA as a constituent-based architecture is used to deploy WSNs according to energy dissipation through their constituents. This view of overall energy consumption in WSNs can be applied to optimizing and balancing energy consumption and increasing the network lifetime.