An efficient data collecting network structure in wireless sensor networks

In a sensor network, a single event may be captured by hundreds of sensor nodes simultaneously. Data in these sensor nodes are thus highly correlated. Data transmission can be facilitated by employing data aggregation techniques. The traditional way to do data aggregation in a sensor network is to divide the network into clusters and elect one node as the cluster head in each cluster. These cluster heads are responsible for collecting data from other nodes within its belonging cluster. Collected data will first be fused before being forwarded to the base station. Due to the design limitations, most nodes in a sensor network are only capable of handling a single connection at a time. Therefore, to collect data from n cluster members, a cluster head will need at least n time slots. In this paper, a special network structure and its formation algorithm are proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed network structure can greatly reduce the delay in data collection.