A Delay and Accuracy Sensitive Data Aggregation Structure in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), data aggregation schemes have been extensively investigated in order to reduce energy, although it has a great side-effect, the end to end delay is increased. This paper proposes a layered clustering structure for data aggregation in wireless sensor networks. In this proposed structure, each layer of clusters has specific delay and accuracy in order to aggregate the information within a given time and predetermined accuracy level. Our objective is the construction of an application-aware structure for data aggregation. In order to control the different accuracies of response, each layer has specific number of nodes. The number of clusters in each layers is set so as to control the time in order to aggregate and transfer data from nodes to the sink within a given deadlines of the application. The simulation presented here evaluates this structure in terms of average end to end delay, accuracy and energy consumption. The results show that this structure can satisfy different application requirements in data aggregation.