Lifetime optimization for Wireless Sensor Networks

In a wireless sensor network (WSN), nodes are battery powered, therefore, there are energy constrained. Network lifetime is one of the most important characteristics of performance for wireless sensor networks. A number of routing schemes, energy efficient and energy-aware, have been proposed to maximize the network lifetime. These schemes typically try to find the minimum energy path to optimize energy usage at a node. In this paper, we consider the lifetime maximization problem, we propose a routing protocols that take into account the battery residual energy in sensor nodes and the energy required for transmission along the path. For each transmission round, only the nodes which have their remaining energies greater than a threshold can participate as relays for other nodes data in addition to sensing the environment. This choice allows the distribution of energy load among any sensor nodes, thus extends network lifetime. Simulation results show that the network lifetimes is increased largely comparable to direct and MTE schemes.