Research On Topology Control Techniques For Wireless Sensor Networks

The advancement of some domains of scientific investigation, including sensor technology, micro-electromechanical systems, information processing technology, embedded computation, modern networks, wireless communication techniques and so on, gives an impulse to the generation and development of modern wireless sensor networks. The nodes in wireless sensor networks often adopt energy limited batteries, and work on complicated and dangerous regions, so their energies could not be supplemented or replaced. Therefore, reducing power consumption and prolonging the network lifetime are important targets of wireless sensor networks.The optimal network topology structure can not only improve the efficiency of network protocols, but also lay the foundation of many applications of wireless sensor networks, further be beneficial to saving energies of nodes and prolonging the network lifetime. So the topology control techniques for three stages in the whole wireless sensor networks, including the stage of initial establishment, operating of networks, and maintenance of topology structure, are analyzed and studied in detail, the classical topology control algorithms based on directed graphs are extended into bidirectional graphs, and an energy-efficient clustering algorithm based on virtual area partition for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks is proposed in this paper.Simulation results show that algorithms based on power control of bidirectional graphs can maintain connectivity of initial network, reduce power consumption of nodes efficiently, and the energy-efficient clustering algorithm based on virtual area partition can prolong the network lifetime and improve the efficiency of communications obviously.