An Efficient Grid-Based Data Gathering Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Data gathering is an important operation in wireless sensor networks. Due to the limited battery power, sensor nodes consume significant energy and drain out of it quickly if each node transmits its sensed data directly to a distant base station, even though the delay time is minimized in a round of communication. Hence, there is a trade-off between minimizing both of the energy consumed by sensor nodes and the delay time, then the overall cost is defined as the energy × delay cost. In this paper, we propose an Efficient Grid-based Data Gathering (EGDG) scheme which adopts a hierarchical grid structure and constructs cycles by connecting heads in each order of the hierarchy. Data transmissions move toward a leader from two starter nodes simultaneously in each cycle. The objective of EGDG is to achieve a better result for the energy × delay cost comparing to other schemes, and also to accomplish significant coverage-preserving at the same time. Simulation results show that EGDG outperforms than LEACH and PEGASIS in terms of rounds, the energy × delay cost and coverage-preserving.

This research is supported by the National Science Council of Republic of China under grant number NSC-94-2213-E-035-027.