Relay Node Deployment Based Small World Effect in Hierarchical Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

The industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs) brings several advantages over traditional wired industrial monitoring and control systems. The communication reliability of IWSNs has to be guaranteed as the real-time field data need to be transmitted to the control system. The specific requirements of IWSNs have brought challenges to the deployment strategy of sensors in industrial environments. Obviously the network architecture has a significant influence on the performance of IWSNs. Therefore, in this paper, we place three types of nodes in a manufacturing shop to monitor equipment situation, production status and environment. We construct an IWSN with small world characteristics through the random additions of efficient relay nodes and short-cuts at a certain probability. The sensor data will be transmitted in multi-hop to the server quickly and exactly through the small world IWSN. In addition, the proposed deployment strategy will ensure balanced energy-usage among the nodes in the network. Simulation results show that the built network topology possesses the property of rapid transmission to reduce the transmission relay drastically and has good robustness. Compared to the flat single-tier network structure of homogeneous sensor nodes, the small world networks utilizing heterogeneous elements will be preferred in IWSNs.