Developing Energy-Efficient Topologies and Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks

The performance of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is greatly influenced by their topology. WSNs with patterned topologies can efficiently save energy and achieve long networking lifetime. In this paper, we discuss different patterned topologies for constructing WSNs which can provide the required coverage area and the connectivity of all sensor nodes. We compare different performance measures among all patterned topologies, and find that WSNs in strip-based topology can provide the greatest coverage area with the same number of sensor nodes as used for WSNs in other patterned topologies. Strip-based topology also consumes least energy in the routing protocol of flooding. We show that triangle-based topology can provide the highest reliability among all patterned topologies. We also propose several routing protocols for WSNs in patterned topologies, which are based on different parameters when selecting nexthop neighbor. Our protocols require only local information and work in a simple and effective way to achieve energy efficiency.