End to End Delay and Energy Consumption in a Two Tier Cluster Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In this work it is considered a circular Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in a planar structure with uniform distribution of the sensors and with a two-level hierarchical topology. At the lower level, a cluster configuration is adopted in which the sensed information is transferred from sensor nodes to a cluster head (CH) using a random access protocol (RAP). At CH level, CHs transfer information, hop-by-hop, ring-by-ring, towards to the sink located at the center of the sensed area using TDMA as MAC protocol. A Markovian model to evaluate the end-to-end (E2E) transfer delay is formulated. In addition to other results such as the well know energy hole problem, the model reveals that for a given radial distance between the CH and the sink, the transfer delay depends on the angular orientation between them. For instance, when two rings of CHs are deployed in the WSN area, the E2E delay of data packets generated at ring 2 and at the “west” side of the sink, is 20% higher than the corresponding E2E delay of data packets generated at ring 2 and at the “east” side of the sink. This asymmetry can be alleviated by rotating from time to time the allocation of temporary slots to CHs in the TDMA communication. Also, the energy consumption is evaluated and the numerical results show that for a WSN with a small coverage area, say a radio of 100 m, the energy saving is more significant when a small number of rings are deployed, perhaps none (a single cluster in which the sink acts as a CH). Conversely, topologies with a large number of rings, say 4 or 5, offer a better energy performance when the service WSN covers a large area, say radial distances greater than 400 m.