One energy-efficient random-walk topology evolution method for underground wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Aimed at the limited energy supply and imperfect topological tolerance for underground wireless sensor networks, one energy-efficient random-walk scale-free topology model is proposed in this article, and a power network topology structure with adjustable rate index gets generated. At first, the network is divided into several clusters, and the cluster heads are selected with the use of random-walk strategy. During the growth of the network, with the introduction of preferred connection for scale-free network, together with considering both the node’s residual energy and the distance among nodes, nodes with larger residual energy present higher connectivity probability, so that the energy balance of the network gets realized. Simulation results show that the communication among the cluster heads selected by the proposed random-walk scale-free topology model presents not only the power-law characteristics of scale-free networks but also has better stability, higher fault tolerance, and it can still balance the energy consumption for nodes and the network and therefore can prolong the lifetime of the network.