Maximizing the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks with the Base Station Location

Nowadays, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been increasingly applied in many different areas and fields. However, one major defect of WSNs is limited energy resources, which affects the network lifetime strongly. A wireless sensor network includes a sensor node set and a base station. The initial energy of each sensor node will be depleted gradually during data transmission to the base station either directly or through other sensor nodes, depending on the distance between the sending node and the receiving node. This paper considers specifying a location for the base station such that it can minimize the consumed energy of each sensor node in transmitting data to that base station, in other words, maximizing the network lifetime. We propose a nonlinear programming model for this optimal problem. Four methods, respectively named as the centroid, the smallest total distances, the smallest total squared distances and greedy method, for finding the base station location are also presented, experimented and compared to each other over 30 data sets that are created randomly. The experimental results show that a relevant location for the base station is essential.