Connectivity and Coverage Based Grid-Cluster Size Calculation in Wireless Sensor Networks

To improve communication and fault tolerance in randomly deployed WSNs, generally more sensors are deployed than needed. In other words, since the communication range of sensor nodes is usually much smaller than their sensing ranges, redundant sensor nodes are deployed in the network. This implies that there can be many nodes in a network which may be sensing and providing the same readings. Estimating appropriate amount and deployment positions of nodes to avoid redundant data transmissions can be a complex task. This task gets further complex if we have an environment of heterogeneous sensed data collected from the same region. On the other hand, collecting data from all of the sensor nodes creates unnecessary data flow and consumes unnecessary energy of the network. Many researchers have proposed grid-cluster based WSNs that have resolved this problem to some extent. But the question arises about which should be the most efficient size and shape of the grid. In this paper we have analysed these features of grid-cluster on the basis of communication and sensing ranges of sensor nodes. We have given the comparative analysis of different sized and shaped grid-clusters in terms of energy efficiency, connectivity and number of nodes in WSN.