An Optimal Relay Dispatching Method for Chain-based Wireless Sensor Networks

A sensor network is deployed to monitor and collect the information of environment. The common methods to organize sensors are the cluster and chain architecture. In the chain architecture, each sensor needs to report its gathered data and relay the data of its neighbours to the collector. The sensors which are close to the collector always exhaust their energy faster than the ones in the edge of the chain because of the heavy packet relay task. When these sensors near the collector are out of work, the gathered data cannot be delivered to the collector, and the sensor network loses its functionality even the sensors in the edge are still alive. In this paper, we deduce the optimal relay dispatching model for the chain-based wireless sensor network. All sensors will exhaust their energy at the same time. Sensors use at most three different transmitting power levels to relay the gathered data. The simulation results show that the network can endure longer. The energy consumption on sensors can achieve high balance and the number of hop-relay in the single-hop relay topology can also be reduced.