Determining Localized Tree Construction Schemes Based on Sensor Network Lifetime

Abstract

The communication energy consumption in a data-gathering tree depends on the number of descendants to the node of concern as well as the link quality between communicating nodes. In this paper, we examine the network lifetime of several localized tree construction schemes by incorporating the communication overhead due to imperfect link quality. Our study is conducted based on empirical data obtained from a real-world deployment, which is further supported by mathematical analysis. For the case of a sparse node density, a large network size and a low link threshold, we show that the link-quality-based scheme provides the longer network lifetime than the minimum hop routing schemes. We present a lower bound on the number of nodes per hop and the link quality threshold of the radio range, which work together to result in a superior localized scheme for longer network lifetime.