An optimized aggregators selection problem for industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

In-network data aggregation can reduce the data collection cost and improve the performance of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Whereas there is no consideration for this in-network processing in current WSN protocols based on industrial application. Clustering sensor nodes is an effective technique to achieve in-network aggregation in WSNs. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how judicious selection of a few aggregators from the sensor nodes can significantly reduce the data collection cost. The problem resembles the classical multi-objective network location problem. For large network, this paper shows an approximate algorithm which provides a suboptimal solution. It makes the selection of aggregators well-adapted to the network structure under the constraint of minimal data collection cost. Simulation results show that the algorithm efficiently reduces the data-collection cost compared with the un-aggregation data collection and enhances the transmission reliability.