GRE: Graded Residual Energy Based Lifetime Prolonging Algorithm for Pipeline Monitoring Sensor

Wireless sensor networks have been applied to monitor pipeline structural health. In these networks, expensive multi-sinks with energy harvesting modules are deployed along the linear pipeline, and battery powered sensor nodes are deployed between the sinks. One of the main problems in such networks is the unbalance of energy consumption of sensor nodes, which makes the whole monitoring system lose its functionality with only a small percentage of sensor nodes depleted of their energy. In this paper, we propose a distributed sensing data propagation algorithm based on graded residual energy (GRE) of the sensor nodes, in order to achieve balanced energy consumption among sensor nodes. The optimum number of energy grades of GRE has been calculated through theoretical analysis in terms of maximizing network lifetime. The simulation results have shown that GRE can achieve balanced energy consumption between the sensor nodes and at the same time prolong the lifetime of the whole monitoring system.