Two-tiered wireless sensor networks - base station optimal positioning case study

In this study, the question of `Where should the base station be placed in a two-tiered wireless sensor network (WSN) field?` has been investigated. The objective is to minimise the overall energy consumption in a WSN. A heuristic algorithm has been proposed to find such a base station location. Considering some nodes to be far enough to use a different path loss model for their signals to the base station, our proposed algorithm considers two categories of nodes and hence two different path loss models based on their distance from the base station. The results show that the new algorithm provides a better base station location than the earlier methods. The overall energy consumption is quite close to the optimal solution.