Characterization and mitigation of the energy hole problem of many-to-one communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), the lifetime of a uniformly deployed WSN is impaired by the sensors that are close to the sink, by a phenomenon called energy hole problem. Those nodes are more likely to relay more packets than those that are further. This problem is strongly related to the topology induced by the deployment of nodes along the sensor field. In this work, we explore the complex network properties exhibited by the graphs that represent WSNs, and propose the use of a new centrality measure called Sink Betweenness. We use this metric to devise a new data-collection algorithm able to alleviate the energy hole effects by evenly balancing the relay load, and thus, increasing the network lifetime. Simulation results show that our solution can substantially decrease the difference of the number of transmissions among the nodes that are situated close to the sink.