Lifetime maximization of wireless sensor networks for a fault diagnosis system

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are spatially distributed autonomous sensors to monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, pressure, etc., and to cooperatively pass their data through the network to a main location. The combination of all the sensors forms a network. The signals/messages from each node are transmitted to a base station, which acts as a central control unit for the entire WSN. The base station is the place where the signals from the sensor nodes are received, processed or sent to any specific place required for the application. The signals from the sensor are sent to the base station with the help of different routing techniques. Every routing technique is unique and possesses its own advantages and disadvantages. Hence, depending on the requirement of the application, the routing methodology is determined. Even if one node fails, the routing method will redirect the data through the nodes which are alive. Hence, it will not affect the network operation. The lifetime of the WSN is a major parameter which is of great concern in most of the researches in WSN. There are many routing techniques developed in WSN and among them SEP and LEACH are used for the simulation in the present work.Lifetime maximization of WSN depends on the factors like, amountof data transmitted, the frequency of data transmission (how frequently the data is transmitted), the routing (the path travelled by the signals), the environment (indoor/outdoor), the computational effort on the sensor nodes, the distance between the sensor node and the base station, etc. The first three factors are well reported area as there are many studies in those as reported in the literature. newline