A New Energy-Efficient, Scalable and Robust Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks

The major problem for most of wireless sensor networks applications is the energy consumption. In this paper we propose a new architecture called EDETA (Energy-efficient aDaptive hiErarchical and robusT Architecture) optimized to save node´s power. This architecture is scalable and suitable for heterogeneous and homogeneous wireless sensor networks, supports single or multiple sinks, and also provides features increasely-demanded in the current applications such as fault tolerance and bounded-time response communications. The proposed protocol is able to autoconfigure, and it is based on two-levels hierarchical architecture. The lower level is based on cluster organization, while the upper one is formed as a dynamic tree of clusters heads to send the data to the sink. Our experiments, based on real energy measures, show that EDETA can reduce the energy consumption in typical applications in a factor of 8× compared with most popular power-aware protocols. Furthermore, EDETA multiplies the lifetime of the sensor network while providing, in addition, extra-features such as fault-tolerant mechanisms and bounded time.