Self-optimized collaborative data communication in wireless sensor networks

Collaborative data communication is one of the efficient approaches in wireless sensor networks (WSN) in terms of life-time, reliability and quality of service (QoS) enhancement. In this paper, we propose a new self-optimized collaborative algorithm which minimizes the energy consumption by decreasing the number of collaborative nodes and at the same time guarantees the demanded quality. To do this, we focus on the fact that during the collaboration, a receiver node aggregates the signals of the collaborative nodes separately. The major task of this node is the time adjustment of the collaborative nodes to receive their signals synchroneously. The proposed algorithm performs an extra process to sort the aggregated signals based on their bit error rate (BER) as the quality and select the minimum number of the nodes with higher rank for collaboration. It is because the low quality signals have negative effect on the collaboration performance, as confirmed experimentally. The new algorithm gains higher level of energy storage balance without increasing of the inter-node communications or computational load by modification of the node selection metric. It also guarantees the demanded QoS through modification of the collaboration based on the signal quality at the destination which results in higher reliability. Based on the proposed algorithm, sensor nodes can gain the optimum efficiency during collaborative data communication without external management resources. The algorithm is applicable in various scenarios and network structures.