Hierarchical Ring-Based Data Gathering for Dense Wireless Sensor Networks

Data gathering is an essential operation in wireless sensor networks. For periodic data gathering applications, each sensor node has data that must be sent to a distant base station in a round of communication. Due to the limited battery power of sensor nodes, each sensor node transmitting its sensed data to the base station directly significantly consumes its energy. This work presents a hierarchical ring-based data gathering (HRDG) scheme for dense wireless sensor networks. A hierarchical grid structure is constructed, and only some sensor nodes are elected as grid heads for gathering data, subsequently reducing the total energy consumption per round. Grid heads are then organized into hierarchical rings to decrease the transmission delay of a round. The proposed HRDG scheme focuses on reducing the energy x delay cost in a round of data gathering. Moreover, the energy x delay cost of HRDG is analyzed. Simulation results indicate that the proposed HRDG scheme outperforms other data gathering schemes in terms of the number of rounds, the energy x delay cost and coverage ratio.