An energy-efficient framework for data aggregation in wireless sensor networks based on distributed source coding

This paper presents a data aggregation and forwarding framework in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that will help in reducing energy consumption and hence prolong network lifetime. This approach is based on the fact that WSNs usually contain a large number of sensor nodes typically with highly correlated data readings. The proposal is to deploy distributed source coding (DSC) in compressing data messages to reduce transmission energy requirements along with avoiding data redundancy. Specifically, a DSC construction is proposed to determine the number of bits needed to encode a data message by a sensor node relative to its correlated neighbors without exchanging excessive communication messages among them.