Energy is a major concern in wireless sensor networks (WSN). These devices are typically battery operated and provided with a limited amount of energy. As a consequence, the time during which sensors can monitor the interesting phenomena and communicate through wireless signals might be limited because of (sometimes) irreplaceable batteries. Additionally, it is very common for WSN to be used in remote or hostile environments which possibly makes necessary a random placement strategy (by using an airplane, a drone or a helicopter). Hence, the sensors location is not known a priori and approaches to efficiently use the energy are needed to answer to network topologies only known after sensors deployment. This thesis explores the use of column...