A Tree Based Data Aggregation Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks Using GA

Energy is one of the most important items to determine the network lifetime due to low power energy nodes included in the network. Generally, data aggregation tree concept is used to find an energy efficient solution. However, even the best aggregation tree does not share the load of data packets to the transmitting nodes fairly while it is consuming the lowest possible energy of the network. Therefore, after some rounds, this problem causes to consume the whole energy of some heavily loaded nodes and hence results in with the death of the network. In this paper, by using the Genetic Algorithm (GA), we investigate the energy efficient data collecting spanning trees to find a suitable route which balances the data load throughout the network and thus balances the residual energy in the network in addition to consuming totally low power of the network. Using an algorithm which is able to balance the residual energy among the nodes can help the network to withstand more and consequently extend its own lifetime. In this work, we calculate all possible routes represented by the aggregation trees through the genetic algorithm. GA finds the optimum tree which is able to balance the data load and the energy in the network. Simulation results show that this balancing operation practically increases the network lifetime.