A cluster-based multipath delivery scheme for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of a large number of nodes with limited battery power. Thus, the communication must be designed to conserve the limited energy resources of the nodes. In this paper, we propose a cluster-based multipath delivery scheme, called CMDS, which uses cluster and multipath to improve the capability of load balance, and thus prolonging the network lifetime. Firstly, CMDS organizes the nodes into clusters so that nodes communicate information only with clusterheads and clusterheads take the task of data aggregation. Then, clusterheads transmit information to base station (sink) along multiple paths. When clusterheads or intermediate nodes choose the next hop node for forwarding data, they will use some parameters, such as the residual energy and the number of hops to sink among the neighbors, that are helpful to distribute traffic among all nodes. Simulation results show that the CMDS has great potential in efficiently distributing energy consumption and extending the network lifetime.