Exploiting Heterogeneity to Prolong the Lifetime of Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensor nodes are typically power-constrained with limited lifetime, and thus it is necessary to know how long the network sustains its networking operations. We consider the network lifetime as the time until that a majority of functional nodes remains connected of one another, forming a giant component, in the network. We then analytically examine such network lifetime of a large-scale WSN via the theory of site percolation on a random graph model with a given degree distribution. In particular, we develop an analytical framework to quantify the network lifetime if the node lifetime can be controlled based on its degree, and show in theory and simulation that, by properly exploiting the heterogeneity over the node degrees, we can always increase the network lifetime when compared with that under the comparable degree-independent node lifetime.