Deploying Relay Nodes in WSNs by Considering Uneven Energy Consumption

Abstract

To help solve the problem of uneven energy consumption, we use relay nodes to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Since the energy of sensors may not be consumed evenly, the most important question is how relay nodes should be deployed to prolong the lifetime of WSNs. The solutions are different in singlehop communication mode or multi-hop communication mode. To have better energy-saving WSNs, we deploy relay nodes on regions where the energy is consumed most in both single-hop and multi-hop communication modes. We propose a weight mechanism to help decide the relay node deployment. Our deployment strategy considers uneven traffic problem and biased energy consumption simultaneously. The proposed method leads to a better deployment of relay nodes to help WSNs perform more effectively. Simulation results show the merits of our proposed method.