Collaborative Topology Control for Many-to-One Communications in Wireless Sensor Networks

Topology control is relevant in wireless sensor network because of two reasons, namely minimal sensor coverage and power constraints. The former condition is typically satisfied by high-density deployment, whereas the latter mainly concerns with the control protocol design that is adaptable. Controlling communication topology is at the center of the efforts to optimize network performance while improving energy conservation. A dense topology often results in high interference and lower spatial reuse thus reduced capacity, while sparse topology is susceptible to network partitioning and sub-optimal path selection from the routing layer. Topology control has been extensively studied in both flat and hierarchical network by mean of power adjustment and clustering, respectively. Despite a common goal of making the topology less complex both techniques differ in their approach. While the focus of clustering is to form a connected backbone which consists of a minimum subset of nodes, i.e., dominating set, power adjustment focuses on minimizing energy consumption. Combining both approaches remains a relatively lesser explored area. We proposed a hybrid framework called collaborative topology control protocol, which combines dominating set-based clustering and transmission power adjustment. The protocol operates in two stages. During the first stage, a parameterized minimum virtual connected dominating set algorithm is executed to obtain clusters of various desirable properties. In the second stage, each cluster-head executes a distributed power adjustment algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed topology control framework is capable of versatile performance in terms of transmission range/energy cost, the number of neighbors, edges, and hop distance. Moreover, the topology construction process uses the locally available information only with minimal communication overhead.