Broadcasting for network lifetime maximization in wireless sensor networks

Networks that are dynamically formed by hundreds or thousands of inexpensive sensors are widely used in environmental monitoring, disaster recovery and the other domains. In this paper we present a protocol, LM-PB, for on-line broadcast routing in wireless sensor networks where the sensors are energy-constrained. Our protocol is aiming at maximizing the duration before the network becomes inoperative due to the lack of battery energy at sensors. An appropriate selection of transmitting sensors, which cover the rest in the network, is an efficient technique for broadcasting. LM-PB makes such selections by utilizing a novel timing heuristic, called FDL. It does not need any explicit control message and is free of exploring the network topology. Our experimental results demonstrate that LM-PB provides longer network lifetime compared with the existing passive protocols. Meanwhile we notice that the total number of successfully routed messages, termed as the network capacity, is also maximized by LM-PB. Particularly, the results indicate that the additional delay incurred by LM-PB is much less than the worst case analyzed value, and is acceptable.