Comparative Study of Wireless Sensor Networks Energy-Efficient Topologies and Power Save Protocols

Ad hoc networks are the ultimate technology in wireless communication that allow network nodes to communicate without the need for a fixed infrastructure. The paper addresses issues associated with control of data transmission in wireless sensor networks (WSN) - a popular type of ad hoc networks with stationary nodes. Since the WSN nodes are typically battery equipped, the primary design goal is to optimize the amount of energy used for transmission. The energy conservation techniques and algorithms for computing the optimal transmitting ranges in order to generate a network with desired properties while reducing sensors energy consumption are discussed and compared through simulations. We describe a new clustering based approach that utilizes the periodical coordination to reduce the overall energy usage by the network.