Mitigating energy hole problem with power control in heterogeneous sensor networks

Structure of a network and nodes' position are two important factors in energy consumption (EC) of sensors in a multi-hop wireless sensor network (WSN). On the other hand, selection of the specific transmission power by a node changes its surrounding structure and its neighborset. In this paper, we study the problem of equalizing EC in heterogeneous WSNs by adjusting sensors' transmission power level. We define a network formation game and prove that it always converges to Nash stable topologies which preserve network connectivity. Based on this game, we propose distributed localized algorithm to establish balanced EC and show its performance on different network distributions and densities.