A lifetime-extending deployment strategy for multi-hop wireless sensor networks

The issue of deployment strategy of sensor nodes to -extend the lifetime of a multi-hop wireless sensor network is addressed. Based on load-balancing concept, an algorithm is proposed to deploy homogeneous sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network with a given number of sensor nodes which are continuously monitoring an area of interest. The densities of sensor nodes ore determined by solving an optimization problem which maximizes the coverage percentage under the constraints that the traffic loads among sensor nodes at different distances are equal. Simulations are performed by using the proposed algorithm accompanied with energy-efficient clustering and gradient-based routing algorithms. The simulation results indicate that, for a given number of battery-powered sensor nodes, the network with sensors deployed in the proposed distribution can sustain for extended lifetime and break down more gracefully than that for 2-D Poisson distribution while maintaining satisfactory coverage.