Power Aware Wireless Sensor Networks Using Tripwire Detection and Cueing

Wireless microsensor networks have gained great momentum due to collaborative research efforts on various disciplines. It has made many useful applications possible. In a typical sensor network application, in order to operate for a long period of time, sensor nodes need to conserve energy. In this paper, a multi-hop tripwire detection and cueing scheme is proposed for energy conservation in wireless sensor networks. It uses a cueing protocol and a detection algorithm to enable a two-tier sensor network for energy conservation. The proposed scheme overcomes the false alarm problem and the exposed alarm problem in sensor network applications. For a typical application scenario of sensor networks, our simulation results show that a two-tier sensor network employing the proposed scheme can reduce energy consumption by about 55% when compared to a homogeneous sensor network.