Development of an Energy-Efficient Wireless Sensor Network Model for Perimeter Surveillance

Abstract

Wireless distributed microsensor systems have proven to be indispensable in facilitating reliable and efficient monitoring and surveillance in safety-critical infrastructure. The conventional routing protocols comprising direct transmission, minimum-transmission-energy, multihop routing, and static clustering are no longer optimal for wireless sensor networks (WSN) applications. There is a need for highly robust routing protocols to distribute the energy load among the sensors in a WSN. This paper aims at the development of an energy-efficient WSN model adapted for perimeter surveillance. An efficient routing algorithm that seeks to balance the energy among the nodes in a WSN is proposed. This is achieved by leveraging the low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchical protocol and amending its random cluster head selection features. The deployment of sensor nodes around the perimeter of an experimental region and the formation of clusters were initiated before selecting a cluster head. The node that requires the least transmission energy for a given transmission round was considered. The cluster head task is assigned so that the least transmission energy is expended, and the shortest distance between the transmitter and the receiver from the cluster heads is followed. Simulations were carried out for the non-hierarchical and the various levels of hierarchy-based clusters to test the validity of the proposed routing algorithm. Results indicate that the lifetime of the networks is 210, 380, 481, 543, 550, 557, and 559 for the non-hierarchical (1 cluster), level 1 hierarchy (5 clusters), level 2 hierarchy (10 clusters), level 3 hierarchy (20 clusters), level 4 hierarchy (30 clusters), level 5 hierarchy (60 clusters), and level 6 hierarchy (120 clusters), respectively. The standard deviation of the residual energy of the network decreases from approximately 1.2825 for the nonhierarchical to about 0.0138 for the level 6 hierarchy. The lowest standard deviation value of the level 6 hierarchy indicates that the perimeter network maximizes the initial energy of its nodes using the proposed algorithm. Additionally, the proposed routing technique significantly reduces the energy consumption of the sensor nodes in the perimeter of the investigated region, and tremendously elongates the lifespan of the network compared to the non-hierarchical routing technique. Finally, the optimal energy-efficient level of hierarchy in the studied perimeter sensor network is observed at the maximum possible cluster size.