A novel transmission power selection mechanism for wireless sensor networks

Minimum hop routing is an energy-efficient routing protocol with minimized energy consumption, but the reliability of data transmission is not enough. The routes tend to have a minimum hop count but contain weak links, which cause large number of data retransmissions. In this paper, a transmission power selection mechanism is proposed, where the power to transmit an overhead packet and a data packet are considered separately. Specifically, a power selection factor δ is proposed to enhance the quality of communication links. The results of simulation show that the number of data retransmissions is reduced by choosing the power selection factor appropriately.