Exploiting Spatial Correlation in a three dimensional Wireless Sensor Network

Physical attributes such as temperature exhibit gradual change in value with space. Observations from the sensor nodes are thus highly correlated. In this paper, we propose a scheme to exploit the spatial correlation of data in a three dimensional wireless sensor network (WSN), in a way so as to reduce the number of transmissions in the network, thereby saving energy. The presented work is an extension of the earlier proposed TREG scheme which is only applicable to two dimensional WSN. Our scheme involves formation of binary tree and transmission of data along the tree nodes. Simulation has been carried out for different tree heights. Simulation results show that a tree height of four provides results with optimal values.