Modelling a Wireless Sensor Network as a Small World Network

Wireless sensor networks experience a number of problems not found in wired networks, such as limited power resources, location identification and message routing in a wireless medium. Analysis of small world networks have shown that it is possible to transmit information from one node to another node some random distance away within a small number of hops (i.e. small world networks have a small diameter). The objective of this paper is to show that it is possible to model a wireless sensor network as a small world network by using multiple sink nodes to emulate the long edge required in small world networks. The two key areas that would benefit from modelling wireless networks as small world networks are localization and routing.