A new scheme for evaluating energy efficiency of data compression in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Data communication incurs the highest energy cost in wireless sensor networks, and restricts the application of wireless sensor networks. Data compression is a promising technique that can reduce the amount of data exchanged between nodes and results in energy saving. However, there is a lack of effective methods to evaluate the efficiency of data compression algorithms and to increase nodes’ energy efficiency. The energy saving of nodes is related to both hardware and software, this article proposes a new scheme for evaluating energy efficiency of data compression in wireless sensor networks according to the node’s hardware and software. The relationship between the energy efficiency and the hardware and software factors is expressed by a formula. In this formula, energy efficiency can be improved by increasing the compression ratio and decreasing the ratio of s/ k, in which k represents the node’s hardware factor related to energy consumption of processor, wireless module, and so on and s represents the software factor that reflects the energy consumption of the algorithm. Based on the scheme, a mechanism is proposed to improve the node’s energy efficiency by selecting effective algorithms in accordance with the node’s radio frequency power. The feasibility of the scheme is demonstrated with lossless data compression algorithms on the MSP430F2618 processor.