On the energy-efficient organization and the lifetime of multi-hop sensor networks

Due to hardware, energy, cost and other physical constraints, sensor-based networks present various design, implementation and deployment challenges. An analytical model is presented to estimate and evaluate the node and network lifetime in a randomly deployed multi-hop sensor network. Based on this, we provide a procedure for the creation of an energy efficient sensor network organization, that attempts to extend the lifetime of the communication critical nodes, and as a result the overall network´s operational lifetime.