Distance-Based Routing for Balanced Energy Consumption in Sensor Networks

In sensor networks, data traffic is concentrated towards a small number of base stations, and those nodes close to the base station have to relay large amount of data for the rest of the network. This would deplete the batteries of these nodes very quickly, and reduce the network lifetime. In order to alleviate this problem, a novel solution is proposed in this paper, where the transmission powers of the nodes in the network are determined based on their distance from the base station. This solution promises to balance the energy consumption in the network without periodically collecting network state information or using nodes with special capabilities. The optimal distance based routing strategy is analytically determined, and it is shown that the proposed method can increase the network lifetime by more than twice of that in a network employing minimum energy routing scheme with constant transmission ranges. Finally, the optimal transmission ranges of the nodes are characterized with respect to the network size, and the energy costs due to transmit amplifier and transceiver electronics.