On mitigating hotspots to maximize network lifetime in multi-hop wireless sensor network with guaranteed transport delay and reliability

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensor nodes close to the sink consume more energy than others because they are burdened with heavier relay traffic destined for the sink and trend to die early, forming hotspots or energy holes in WSNs. It has a serious impact on network lifetime. In this paper, three optimization algorithms are proposed to mitigate hotspots and prolong network lifetime for adaptive Mary Phase Shift Keying (MPSK) based wireless sensor networks while transport delay and reliability can be still guaranteed. Based on the insight gained into the relationship between nodal data load and energy consumption in different regions, the first algorithm (GlobalSame) can extend considerably the network lifetime by selecting the optimal nodal transmission radius r, bit error rate ε and transmission rate allocations in bits per symbol (BPS) τ. The second algorithm (RingSame) can further improve network lifetime by comparison to the GlobalSame algorithm, which by selecting different εi and τi for nodes in different regions under constraints of total BER and transport delay . While the third algorithm (NodeDiff) can further improve the network lifetime by adopting different BER ε and BPS τ parameters of the same node for data packets received according to its distance to the sink. Extensive simulation studies show that our algorithms do considerably prolong the network lifetime.