Confounded factor effects on battery life in wireless sensor networks

Widely utilized for numerous applications, wireless sensor networks have become a boon to the academia and industrial communities. However, the stringent energy constraints place a hurdle to the continuous functioning of the sensing devices. Clustering a network leads to a lesser number of nodes participating in active transmissions. Data aggregation reduces redundant packet sending. Given that transmission is the primary energy consuming activity for a sensor mote, this paper exploits the joint advantages of clustering and data aggregation in decreasing communication cost. A data centric analysis was performed to justify the use of data aggregation. Experimental results on a realistic platform with MICAz motes running TinyOS embedded system showed 22% energy savings and 13% overhead reduction, confirming the attractive advantages of data aggregation and clustering such as more efficient transmissions.