Load-Balancing Strategies for Lifetime Maximizing in Wireless Sensor Networks

The lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is crucial. The goal of all WSN application scenarios is to have sensor nodes deployed, unattended, for months or years. In this work, we investigate the problem of energy consumption and lifetime maximizing in a many-to-one sensor network. In such network pattern, all sensor nodes generate and send data to a single sink via multihop transmissions. In our previous experimental studies, we noticed that, since all the sensor data has to be forwarded to a base station via multihop routing, the traffic pattern is highly nonuniform, putting a high burden on the sensor nodes close to the base station. In this paper, we analyze and propose some strategies that balance the energy consumption of these nodes and ensure maximum network lifetime by balancing the load as equally as possible.