Lifetime extension based on residual energy for receiver-driven multi-hop wireless network

An important research topic in wireless sensor networking is the extension of operating time by controlling the power consumption of individual nodes. In a receiver-driven communication protocol, a receiver node periodically transmits its ID to the sender node, and in response the sender node sends an acknowledgment, after which data transmission starts. By applying such a receiver-driven protocol to wireless sensor networks, the average power consumption of the network can be controlled, but there still remains the problem of unbalanced load distribution among nodes. Therefore, part of the network shuts down when the battery of the node that consumes the most power is completely discharged. To extend the network lifetime, we propose a method where information about the residual energy level is exchanged through ID packets in order to balance power consumption. Simulation results show that the network lifetime can be extended by about 70–100 % while maintaining high network performance in terms of packet collection ratio and delay.