Routing Algorithm for Maximizing Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Network for Broadcast Transmission

In the article we discuss solutions of the maximum lifetime broadcasting problem in wireless sensor networks. Due to limited energy resources of the network nodes to find an optimal transmission route of the broadcasted data we minimize the maximum energy consumed by the nodes. We give an analytical solution of the problem in one dimensional regular sensor network for the point-to-point and point-to-multipoint data transmission scheme. We show that in such a network, when the cost of data transmission is a polynomial function of distance between transmitter and receiver, there exist solutions with an equal energy, i.e., all nodes of the network consume the same amount of energy. We assume that in the networks with sensors evenly distributed over some d-dimensional area there always exists an equal energy solution of the problem. To solve the maximum lifetime broadcasting problem in such networks we propose two algorithms. By means of the first algorithm the set of minimum node weight spanning trees in a given network is determined. The second algorithm allows to balance the energy consumption of the sensors for data transmitted along given minimum node weight spanning tree. We show, that the proposed algorithms find an approximate solution of the discussed problem in polynomial time.