Energy Balanced Topology for Sensor Networks

Recent advances in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems(MEMS) and low-power short-range radios have enabledrapid development of wireless sensor networks. Future sensor networks are anticipated to includehundreds or thousands of these devices in manyapplications such as capturing multimedia contentfor surveillance structural health monitoringtracking of accidental chemical leaks machinefailures earthquakes and intrusion detection. With the increase of sensor applications a number ofchallenging problems related to the network protocoldesign have emerged - the most important onesrelating to scalability energy efficiency andlifetime maximisation. Techniques devised for sensornetworks should be scalable to deal with a largenumber of sensors distributed in the field. Wirelesssensor nodes are deployed with limited energyreserves so the networks should operate with minimumenergy overhead. In fact the network should takeinto account not only individual node's energyefficiency but also consider the global picturebecause surviving nodes' energy reserves in a failednetwork are wasted energy.