An energy balanced topology construction protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is an important area of research for practical WSN deployment for extended periods of time. Appropriate topology control (TC), consisting of topology construction and maintenance, facilitates an energy aware and load balanced network while ensuring connectivity and coverage. In this research, the authors propose a novel load balanced TC protocol for connectivity — EAST (Energy Aware Spanning Tree). The EAST protocol's goal is to balance the load while reducing energy utilization for the network. The EAST protocol builds upon the Minimal Spanning Tree (MST) construction method. A Connected Dominating Set (CDS) is constructed while taking into account the energy level of each parent branch to form the communication backbone. The aim of this EAST protocol is to place as many nodes into sleep mode while maintaining the communication backbone of active nodes as determined based on an energy metric. Dynamic Global Topology Recreation (DGTRec) was implemented as the topology maintenance protocol which periodically builds a new communication backbone. The proposed EAST algorithm was simulated and compared with Simple Tree, Random Nearest Neighbor Tree (Random NNT) and Euclidian Minimal Spanning Tree (Euclidian MST). The simulation results demonstrate that the EAST algorithm improves load balancing and event coverage as compared to the other tested algorithms.