Increasing lifetime of wireless sensor networks with energy-aware role-changing

Energy aware and robust self-organization is a challenging task in large, randomly deployed wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we achieve such a self-organization by introducing a hierarchical network structure and additionally roles that represent basic network functionalities like packet forwarding or data aggregation. These roles are exchanged between the participating nodes considering specific constraints. We are focusing on a long network lifetime, which strongly depends on the limited energy resources of each node. Therefore, the complex roles are released by nodes with critical battery levels and are assigned to nodes with more energy capacity left. With this approach, we achieve a uniform energy distribution over the whole network. Finally, we extend the overall lifetime of the network by 40% at continuous capability at all time. We demonstrate the proper function and the efficiency of the postulated protocol and we show its benefits by simulating an applicable “Forest Fire Scenario”.