Self-Organizing Data Collection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Given the resource constraints and the relatively high cost of communication in wireless sensor networks, data collection presents one of the central challenges in this network class. In this paper, we propose an efficient self-organizing data collection protocol, which addresses this challenge. Exploiting the knowledge of the underlying topology, the proposed approach uses a novel link acceptor, responsible for choosing the links to be added to the data routing structure, as well as, a next-hop selector taking into account energy information and the distance towards the sink. Using this information, the introduced next-hop selector allows a straightforward adjustment of the trade-off between preferring shorter routes or a higher degree of load balancing. Further, the amount of oscillations is minimized by using polarization functions and probabilistic next-hop selections.