Taking advantage of data correlation to control the topology of wireless sensor networks

Sleep-based topology control is an important technique used in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to reduce the energy consumption of the individual node platforms and, as a consequence, sleep-based topology control is useful to increase the functional lifetime of the networks. While in the literature there are several schemes that address sleep-based topology control in WSNs, there is no proposal that operates exploiting the information provided by the correlation among sensed data. This paper describes a method to control the topology of a WSN using information about data correlation. With the correlation information, the node platforms are able to create a two-tier network-one tier of active while the other of backup nodes- and thus extend the functional lifetime of the WSN. Basically, the mechanism consists of two steps: (1) autonomous creation of clusters and (2) use of a scheduling algorithm within these clusters. Our scheme has practical relevance since it is simple, localized, decentralized, and scalable. Moreover, using correlation information allows relaxing common assumptions imposed in other topology control schemes. This article provides a tractable model of the scheme and analytical results showing its performance, along with simulations that support the analytical results.