Maximization of Data Gathering in Clustered Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we investigate the maximization of the amount of gathered data in a clustered wireless sensor network (WSN). The amount of gathered data is maximized by (1) choosing the optimal transmit power, and (2) selecting the optimal cluster head. For problem (1), we find closed-form solutions for the optimal or near optimal transmit power of cluster members (CM). For problem (2), we propose a near optimal cluster head selection (CHS) algorithm. The communication burden and computational complexity of CHS only grow linearly with the size of the cluster. In the proposed algorithms, iterations have been avoided in order to significantly lower the complexity of the algorithms compared with traditional iteration-based numerical optimization algorithms, making these approaches suitable for use in energy-constrained wireless sensor networks. The optimization gain is shown to be significant.