Analysis of Energy Consumption and Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, devices are required to self-organize them into a network without previously established infrastructure. Because battery-powered, one of the most important design criteria for this type of network is energy efficiency. The paper analyzes the energy consumption of a wireless sensor network providing periodic data from a sensing field to remote sink. We distinguish between two types of sensor organizations. We formulate the energy consumption and study their lifetime based on a clustering mechanism with varying parameters related to the sensing field, e.g., size and distance. We quantify the optimal number of clusters based our model and show how to allocate energy between different layers.