Energy equilibrium based on corona structure for wireless sensor networks

Although multi-hop routing can reduce communication consumption and extend network scale, energy hole is unavoidable to appear because of the relay nodes being overloaded due to take more tasks. In this paper, we formulate the energy equilibrium problem as an optimal corona division, where data fusion and data slice are both considered in data gathering process. For a circular multi-hop sensor network with uniform node distribution and constant data reporting, we demonstrate that the energy equilibrium of the whole network is unable to be realized no matter whether data fusion and data slice are adopted. However, the maximum energy equilibrium for a given circular area can be achieved only if the area increases in geometric progression from the outer corona to the neighbor inner corona except for the outermost one. Moreover, we use a zone-based allocation scheme to guarantee energy equilibrium of intra-corona. The approach for computing the optimal parameters is presented in terms of maximizing network lifetime. Based on the mathematical model, we propose an energy equilibrium routing based on corona structure (EERCS). Simulating results validate that EERCS can effectively achieve energy equilibrium and prolong the lifetime of network. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.