LBA: Lifetime balanced data aggregation in low duty cycle sensor networks

This paper proposes LBA, a lifetime balanced data aggregation scheme for asynchronous and duty cycle sensor networks under an application-specific requirement of end-to-end data delivery delay bound. In contrast to existing aggregation schemes that focus on reducing the energy consumption and extending the operational lifetime of each individual node, LBA has a unique design goal to balance the nodal lifetime and thus prolong the network lifetime more effectively. To achieve this goal in a distributed manner, LBA adaptively adjusts the aggregation holding time between neighboring nodes to balance their nodal lifetime; as such balancing take place in all neighborhoods, nodes in the entire network can gradually adjust their nodal lifetime towards the globally balanced status. Experimental studies on a sensor network testbed shows that LBA can achieve the design goal, yield longer network lifetime than other non-adaptive and nodal lifetime-unaware data aggregation schemes, and approach the theoretical upperbound performance, especially when nodes have highly different nodal lifetime.