A Study on Hierarchical Energy-Aware Routing Algorithm for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Recently, a new concept called ubiquitous computing has been rising to the surface in the process of changing IT paradigm. This concept called Ubiquitous IT has already transcended the simplest conception or technical blind and dumb, and regard as a new paradigm. Especially, this research has been studied under support of government’s u-IT839 policy in our country. Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) is one of the most important services in the u-IT839 policy and has regard as the core technology in Ubiquitous IT. To provide USN services, WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) which is a base of USN environment is necessary to research. Especially energy efficiency is considered the crucial issues in WSN due to the sensor nodes are equipped with small, often irreplaceable, batteries with limited power capacity. Therefore, many power saving algorithms have been studied and there has been much work on “energy-aware” routing protocols for WSN. For surmounting these problems, this thesis proposes a new routing algorithm for reducing the power consumption of each sensor node in WSNs, combining energy aware cluster head election technique with DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) concept in TORA (Temporally-Ordered Routing Algorithm) and adapt to heterogeneous networks. The simulation results show that the proposed routing algorithm has better energy efficiency than the existing routing algorithms.