Tree-Based Approaches for Improving Energy Efficiency and Life Time of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN): A Survey and Future Scope for Research

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are characterized by highly application-specific nature, stringent resource constraints, self-organizing, spatio-temporal traffic, and large dynamic topology with several contradicting design goals. Of these design goals, network life time and energy efficiency are considered as of paramount importance. Many research works from the past have dedicated themselves in extending the network life time and achieving energy efficiency of WSN through various techniques, including that of the application of Tree as a data structure. This article attempts to present a detailed survey of the existing research works with the application of different variants of Trees. Further, the paper tries to analyze the performance implications of application of variants of trees, advantages, and disadvantages. The paper mentions possible feasibility of the application of Red Black Trees (RBL) in WSN and the potentials for future research while giving algorithmic comparison of RBL with other tree data structures.