An on-line model to design heterogeneous wireless sensor networks based on small world concepts

In this work, we propose an on-line model to design heterogeneous sensor network topologies with small world features. The proposed model takes into account the data communication flow in this kind of network to create network shortcuts toward the sink node in a way that the communication between the sink and the sensor nodes is optimized. The end-points of these shortcuts are nodes with more powerful hardware, leading to a heterogeneous sensor network. We evaluate the on-line model and show that it presents the same small world features observed in the theoretical model. When the shortcuts are created toward the sink node, with a few number of powerful sensors, the network presents better small world features and interesting tradeoffs between energy and latency in the data communication when compared with the original model proposed in the literature.