A distributed routing algorithm for data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

Considering the impact of aggregation cost on the performance of aggregation routes in wireless sensor networks, an aggregation-decision-based distributed routing algorithm for data aggregation is proposed. When source nodes arrive or leave, the algorithm can calculate the aggregation benefit according to data correlation, aggregation cost and transmission cost. Then the algorithm will adaptively make aggregation and routing decisions based on aggregation benefit. Therefore, it can jointly optimize the aggregation and transmission costs and reduce the energy consumption for data gathering. This distributed algorithm makes all the decisions only relying on the local information. Hence, the routing maintenance cost is limited. Simulation results show that the energy consumption difference between this distributed online algorithm and the previous offline one is within 17% under any network conditions.