Tree Topology Based Fault Diagnosis in Wireless Sensor Networks

In order to improve the energy efficiency of the fault diagnosis in wireless sensor networks, we propose a tree topology based distributed fault diagnosis algorithm. The algorithm maintains high node fault detection rate and low fault alarm rate in wireless sensor networks under low node distribution density. First, the algorithm finds a good node with a multi-layer detection method, then, detects the status of other nodes by means of the status relation with the good node which is inferred by the parent-child relation in the tree topology, and up to achieves fault detection of the whole network. In ZigBee tree network, the simulation results show that the algorithm performs better in energy efficiency, and identify the faulty sensors with high accuracy and robustness.