Routing and localization for extended lifetime in data collection wireless sensor networks

Information collected by wireless sensor networks could be essential to community network services. We address two fundamental issues of wireless sensor networks - routing and localization in data collection applications. In particular, by utilizing special characteristics of the applications, energy-efficient methods for routing and localization are proposed. Without any path search, the proposed routing method is able to find the optimal paths which reduce radio activities and balance energy consumption among sensor nodes. The proposed localization method produces the relative locations of nodes without the need for any GPS-capable nodes. The proposed routing and localization methods are, therefore, effective in extending the network lifetime.