A Delay-Constrained and Maximum Lifetime Data Gathering Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

In some delay-sensitive and durative surveillance applications, in order to gather data at each round, all nodes in wireless sensor networks are organized as a tree rooted at the sink. The tree should be designed carefully to meet the challenges of constraining the data gathering delay and maximizing the network lifetime. The problem of constructing the tree is NP-complete. Moreover, a contradiction between the two challenges is proved in this paper. A novel delay-constrained and maximum lifetime data gathering Algorithm, named DCML, is proposed to solve this problem. DCML needs not to know the location of nodes, and it can construct an energy-balanced tree with limited height at each round. Theoretical analyses and simulation results show DCML can not only achieve longer network lifetime than some existing algorithms, but also constrain the data gathering delay in the network effectively.