Increasing the lifetime of a wireless sensor network through data aggregation techniques

In a wireless sensor network (WSN) the basic component is representedby the node. It is the one that offers the network the “intelligent” character, because it has the capability to collect, process and transmit data to the base station. Because the majority of applications imply the necessity of using a battery as power source, the energy consumption is a priority for prolonging the lifetime of the nodes. This paper proposes and evaluates a new combination of data aggregation techniques. Experimental data were taken after simulating transmission on a software platform, but also from physical wireless sensor nodes. The results have shown that implementing the proposed solution leads to a considerable reduction of the consumed energy.