Optimized Operation for Infrastructure-Supported Wireless Sensor Networks

Due to the energy-constrained nature of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), a variety of communication protocols which rely on cluster-based topologies to enhance network capacity or to prolong network operational lifetime have been well studied heretofore. In this paper, we instead study a comprehensive perspective that searches for an optimal operation that considers backbone node placement and communication scheduling methods, as well as network connectivity properties. Specifically, we aim to answer the following three questions: how many backbone nodes are necessary, where to position these nodes, and which backbone nodes can communicate simultaneously to maximally serve the networks. We study the scalability of our approach and its dependency on parameters such as network size and density and present simulation results.