Low-Energy Address Allocation Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

We propose in this paper a low-energy address allocation scheme (LEADS). LEADS is a two-level hierarchical conflict- free address allocation scheme that provides validated address to each node in a wireless sensor network. LEADS provides a quick and energy-efficient self-configuration solution for WSN deployment. It takes the unsolved issues related to random arrival and abrupt departure of sensor nodes into account, both in partitions splitting and merging scenarios. Unlike most of the existing solutions, LEADS does not require any information from neither periodical control packet (HELLO message) (Nesargi and Prakash, 2002), nor routing protocols (Vaidya, 2002). In LEADS, the addresses space is divided into addresses pools which are managed by addresses agents. Every agent uses a stateful function to assign addresses to the nodes in its neighborhood. The uniqueness of assigned addresses is guaranteed by this two-level allocation strategy. Moreover, LEADS is a localized algorithm. Simulation results show that LEADS achieves the dynamic address allocation task with both lower message cost and lower energy consumption comparing to existing solutions. Our results illustrate the need for a dynamic and low-energy address allocation scheme to realize energy efficient sensor network applications and to extend network lifespan.