Small-World Model Based Topology Optimization in Wireless Sensor Network

This paper investigates how the small world concept can be applied in the context of wireless sensor networks. We investigate the use of wired short cuts in clustered wireless sensor networks. Before adding wires, we divide the network into clusters with high clustering coefficient. Then add wires acting as shortcuts to bring down the hop count in order to construct a small world. We have developed an analytical model to analyze the gain in path length reduction under the cluster situation and by using short cuts, for arbitrary positions of the sink. We also conducted extensive simulations to validate our analysis. Our research indicate that adding a few wires to the wireless sensor network can not only reduce the hop count of the sensor network, but also balances the energy consumption, prolong the network lifetime, and improve the network robustness, which are both important issues in the resource limited WSN.