Battery Allocation for Maximizing Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network has been an area of interest among researchers. Designing a wireless sensor network involves multiple issues such as size and processing capacity of the sensors, number of the cluster heads, number of the base stations, routing protocols, battery of the nodes, layout of the system, etc. Battery is a critical factor, since sensor networks do not involve maintenance as they are situated in remote places. Hence the available battery must be utilized effectively to increase the efficiency. In our study we address issues associated with battery such that to increase the lifetime of the system. Existing standards for the sensors are implemented with each node having equal battery level `B\u27 referred to as `Uniform system\u27 in our study. Thus total amount of battery consumed by N nodes is `N * B\u27. In our approach we study the distribution of this `N * B\u27 battery in non-uniform manner, referred as `Non-uniform system\u27, such that each node would be allocated with different battery level depending upon its position and amount of information it receives and transmits. Initially we commence with the observation of the behavior of this approach on a chain of nodes. These nodes generate information at constant rate and transmit per cycle. We observed that there is a huge amount of increase in the lifetime as compared to lifetime of the uniform system. We step further in our experimentation by restricting the amount of battery each node can have and then quantizing it. Results indicate that only 3 levels of batteries instead of N, give us significant increase in the lifetime. These results validate our approach for practical implementation. We progressed by observing success of our approach on random topology where nodes are laid randomly in the area of experimentation. Approximately same increase in the lifetime as achieved initially without restricting battery levels can be achieved. Simulation results show that non-uniform system performs much better than uniform system. This approach of non uniform battery levels can be implemented in sensor networks such that system lives longer giving more throughput and thus increasing efficiency