The impact of the transmission power range on energy consumption for wireless sensor networks

In a wireless sensor network, sensor nodes located near the sink will have to bear more communication responsibilities in forwarding the data generated by the nodes located far f rom the sink. The nodes which a re away from the sink communicate with the sink via the nodes which are in proximity of sink. Thus the nodes which are in proximity of sink will run out of battery power very soon and create bottleneck for communication. Some researches tried to balance the loading of sensors by adjusting the power range of sensors. However, simply reducing the power range does not always reduce the loading of sensors in the bottleneck zone. In this paper, the impact of the transmission power range on energy consumption of a wireless network is analyzed. Some simulation results are given to show how the transmission power setting affects the energy consumption of wireless networks.