An energy efficient integrated approach for in network data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Over few decades, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have received significant interest both in academia and industry and are becoming part of the Internet. A wireless sensor network consists of large number of tiny sensor nodes with one or more base stations. Due to its small size, the sensor nodes have limited energy, memory, bandwidth and processing capabilities. The constrained energy has direct impact on the lifetime of WSNs. A major source of energy consumption is the transmission of data from sensor nodes to the base station. Thus every feasible solution that intends to reduce data transmissions is widely sought. newlineIn-network data aggregation is an inherent energy conservation paradigm in resource constrained WSNs to maximize the network lifetime. It aggregates the sensory data at intermediate nodes, eliminates data redundancy and forwards the single aggregated data packet to the upstream nodes. By data aggregation, the number of data transmissions is greatly reduced which consequently minimizes the energy consumption and thus increases the lifetime of sensor networks. However, in-network data aggregation by itself is not adequate to increase the lifetime of WSNs. The efficiency of in-network data aggregation depends on the routing structure, and the data transmission schedule employed. In addition, security mechanisms are needed to protect the data being aggregated from attacks. newline