Energy Balanced In-Network Aggregation Using Multiple Trees in Wireless Sensor Networks

Advances in wireless networks are expected to play an increasing role in systems that are aimed at collecting information. One of the main challenges in wireless sensor networks is that a sensor node has limited battery power. Therefore in order to increase the lifetime of sensor nodes, we need to reduce the amount of energy consumption. For reducing energy consumption in sensor networks, in-network aggregation is one of the proposed methods. However in-network aggregation does not keep the energy balance if some nodes are on the most frequently used paths in a network such as sink node. In order to consider more energy efficiency through load balancing, we propose a new in-network aggregation structure based on multiple trees, called MULT, for further extending the lifetime of in-network aggregation. Unlike existing in-network aggregation structures, which aim to reduce communication cost, the proposed MULT further provides energy balance. MULT has 3phases: first building the clusters, second connecting the clusters and third making multiple trees. MULT is based on creating node clusters using distance between nodes. In addition, a new clustering method, called HYC (HYbrid Cluster) is introduced for MULT structure. We compare the MULT with LEACH and EAD, which are popular in-network aggregation methods. MULT outperforms LEACH and EAD for energy load balance. KeywordsSensor Network, Energy Load Balance, In-Network aggregation