Reliable and energy-efficient data collection modelling in wireless sensor networks

One of the major challenges in data-gathering wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is to achieve the reliable and energy-efficient data collection. In this paper, we investigate using the spatial correlation of sensor observations to model information accuracy and power consumption in WSNs. Both our analysis and simulation results show that the pre-defined information accuracy can be achieved with only a limited number of sensors jointly sensing the same event. Hence, lots of power can be saved to prolong the network lifetime.