Energy balancing algorithms in Wireless Sensor Networks

The energy consumption in Wireless Sensor Networks, WSN, need to be balanced in order to avoid early depletion of nodes. In this paper we use a common context to analyze a broad range of the energy balancing algorithms suggested in literature. In addition we suggest three new algorithms to complete the range. Altogether, nine different balancing techniques are analyzed. We focuses on networks running the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) routing protocol. Our simple change in RPL´s parent selection procedure can give a significant balancing effect without any increase in management cost. However, the best balancing algorithm is when the nodes exchange residual-energy information to ensure forwarding through the highest residual-energy next-hop node. The increased information exchange implies increased management cost due to the amount of information transmitted and added computational load.