Single sink node placement strategy in wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), all the data collected by a sensor are forwarded to a sink node. The placement of a sink node has a great impact on the energy consumption and lifetime of WSNs. This paper investigates the energy-oriented and lifetime-oriented sink node placement strategies in single-sink WSNs, and then gives the mathematical solution of lifetime-oriented placement strategy, which takes both total energy consumption and sensor density near the sink node into consideration. Finally, we evaluate the performance of different placement strategies in the networks of non-uniform energy distribution. Simulation results show that the networks with lifetime-oriented strategy consume energy faster, but have a longer lifetime.