PECA

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have emerged in many applications as a platform to collect data and monitor a specified area with minimal human intervention. The initial deployment of WSN sensors forms a network that consists of randomly distributed devices/nodes in a known space. Advancements have been made in low-power micro-electronic circuits, which have allowed WSN to be a feasible platform for many applications. However, there are two major concerns that govern the efficiency, availability, and functionality of the network—power consumption and fault tolerance. This paper introduces a new algorithm called Power Efficient Cluster Algorithm (PECA). The proposed algorithm reduces the power consumption required to setup the network. This is accomplished by effectively reducing the total number of radio transmission required in the network setup (deployment) phase. As a fault tolerance approach, the algorithm stores information about each node for easier recovery of the network should any node fail. The proposed algorithm is compared with the Self Organizing Sensor (SOS) algorithm; results show that PECA consumes significantly less power than SOS.