DCOSS ́09 International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems

In this talk, we present recent research on simple, local energy aware mechanisms for prolonging the lifetime of sensor networks. We consider the fundamental problem of data propagation, when sensors collect data from the environment and report it to a particular sink node. Sensors collaborate locally to relay data in a multi-hop fashion towards the sink. However, the geometry of the data-paths from sensors to the sink leads to the overuse of sensors located near the sink and shortens the functioning lifetime of the network by incurring early disconnections although there may be still a lot of energy available in the network as a whole. This simple observation leads to questioning whether balancing the energy consumption among sensors to make their functioning lifetime more or less identical is a relevant strategy. Actually, it turns out that energybalancing leads to maximizing the network lifetime and thus it is indeed worth designing such energy balance mechanisms.