Building Optimal Topologies for Real-Time Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks acclaimed a wide popularity because of their low cost and their easiness to be deployed in remote areas where human intervention is very minimal. However, these deployments have constrained by the resources such as power, memory, processing power etc. In order to enhance the reliability and life-time of these networks, it is necessary to develop algorithms that minimize the resource usage. In sensor networks, the topology places a key role in optimizing the resources. If we design a proper topology, a large area can be covered with relatively less number of nodes compared to the normal flat/clustering techniques. This research work deals with creating optimum network topologies that minimizes delay and makes efficient use of available buffer size, lesser intermediate nodes and so on. This paper discusses a set of schemes that design suitable networks under the constraints such as varying data rate, varying packet size and so on. This work discusses schemes that find the optimal number of intermediate nodes for a given set of lower level nodes with varying data rates. This work also discusses a set of algorithms that chooses maximum number of lower level nodes for a given set of intermediate nodes with limited buffer.