A survey on topology control in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks have a wide range of potential, practical and useful applications. However, there are many challenging problems that need to be addressed for efficient operation of wireless sensor networks in real applications. One of the fundamental and important problems in sensor networks is the topology control problem since most sensors are equipped with non-rechargeable batteries and the density of deployed sensors is very high. Topology control needs to reduce the power-consumption and extend the lifetime of sensor networks while satisfying certain application requirements. To energy-efficient control the topology structure of sensor networks, the common approaches are to adjust the transmission power of sensors and to dynamically schedule sensor's cycles. In this paper, we survey the state-of-the art topology control techniques, present an overview and analysis of the solutions proposed in recent research literature.