Impact of Scalability and Density on Lifespan of Energy-Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

Sparse and dense wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are both broadly implemented due to the rapid advancement of control and communication technologies. Impact of both scalability and density on the lifespan of WSNs has however seldom been examined which depends on the sensor node deployment. Scalability takes a critical role in both the connectivity and coverage range of WSNs, which in turn is also relevant to the lifespan defined in terms of either the first node or last node. Without loss of generality, to minimize the power consumption and optimize the WSN lifespan, energy-efficient WSNs are selected to analyze the impact of scalability and density on the WSNs lifespan in this research. When path transmission energy and transceiver circuit energy are both taken into account, it is not guaranteed that either single-hop routing or multihop routing is always optimal. In general, single-hop routing is more efficient for WSNs in small diameter coverage range at high radio transceiver power, while multi-hop routing is more efficient for WSNs in large transmission distance at low radio transceiver power. As a matter of fact, the single-hop routing is chosen for WSNs analysis with respect to density and scalability in this preliminary study, which can also be easily expanded to multi-hop routing cases.