Mitigation techniques for the energy hole problem in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Uneven energy consumption in wireless sensor networks can drastically reduce the network lifetime. The large number of sensors reporting to a single data collection sink exposes the sensors around the sink to a higher traffic load. This causes the energy at these nodes to be consumed more rapidly which is known as the energy hole problem in wireless sensor networks. Although this problem is inherent to the network topology, several strategies can be developed to delay the hole formation and thus extend the network lifetime. In this work, we measure the performance of three different approaches used to mitigate the energy hole problem in surveillance wireless sensor networks. We evaluate the surveillance quality of the network over time for different network configurations and mitigation strategies using realistic sensor models, MAC and routing protocols in simulations.