A graph-center-based scheme for energy-efficient data collection in wireless sensor networks

We consider the problem of sensor data collection in a wireless sensor network (WSN). The geographic deployment of sensors is random, with an irregular network topology. We propose a data collection scheme for the WSN, based on the concept of the center of the graph in graph theory. The purpose of the scheme is to use less power in the process of data collection. Because it is mostly true that the sensors of WSN are powered by batteries, power saving is an especially important issue in WSN. In this paper, we will propose the energy-saving scheme, and provide the experimental results. It is shown that under the energy consumption model used in the paper, the proposed scheme saves about 20% of the power collecting data from sensors.