On the energy efficiency of wireless sensor networks with local fusion centers

In general, a wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of multiple sensors and one fusion center (FC). Each sensor can make a decision for given hypothesis testing and send its decision to the FC where decision fusion takes place. This centralized structure for WSNs can cause various problems. For example, if this FC is damaged or destroyed, the whole WSN collapses. Therefore, WSNs can be more robust if multiple local FCs (LFCs) can be deployed. In this paper, we study the energy efficiency of WSNs with LFCs, which will reveal another advantage of the use of LFCs, and determine the optimal number of LFCs under certain conditions.