EBAT: Energy Balanced Adaptive Transmission Algorithm for Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks, balanced energy dissipation is crucial to achieving satisfactory network lifetime. Since all data packets usually have to be forwarded to the base station via multi-hop routing, the traffic pattern is highly non-uniform, putting a high burden on the sensor nodes close to the base station. This paper proposes novel centralized and distributed algorithms to efficiently balance the energy consumption among sensor nodes. In our algorithms, a sensor node either sends a data packet directly to the base station or sends the data packet to its successor node along a multi-hop path. For each sensor node, a proportion value of multi-hop transmission times to direct transmission times is calculated by the base station through using the centralized algorithm. According to the proportion value, each sensor node uses the distributed algorithm to decide its data packet delivery path every time. The characteristic of our algorithm is low complexity and effective. Simulation results demonstrate that our algorithms enable the sensor nodes to spend energy more uniform in the process of data transmission and that the performance is superior in prolonging the system lifetime of up to 50% over conventional routing protocols.