Minimizing Power Consumption in Wireless Sensor Networks

Power consumption among sensors has always and will continue to be an issue among developers and deployers of such devices. Wireless sensor networks are even more power draining because they utilize a wireless radio communications device which requires more power than any other items on the sensor. This paper discusses some of the previous schemes to reduce power consumption through planning or setting up topologies of the wireless sensors. The main question that this paper seeks to answer is how to set up randomly distributed nodes into a network that is useable for current routing techniques such as the approximate shortest path utilizing a method to account for energy consumption at each hop. The paper presents algorithms for setting up this system, one that works and one that appears better but has unwanted side effects. Adapting a random network to a more structured scheme is difficult, but can be done. This paper gives some samples of the algorithm using a simulation of 10 nodes, looks at the complexity of the algorithm, and concludes that even though this algorithm is not optimal or efficient, it is a good step towards utilizing these methods over randomized networks.