On the Reliability of Wireless Sensor Networks with Multiple Sinks

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Electrical Engineering
• Network Engineering

Background:

• Heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (WSNs) offer benefits like increased coverage and efficient resource use.
• Ensuring reliability and survivability in low-cost WSNs remains a challenge due to wireless environment unreliability.
• Multi-sink architectures are emerging from integrating diverse sensor networks, requiring new reliability assurance methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To define and evaluate a novel reliability metric for WSNs.
• To develop a heuristic algorithm for optimal sink placement to maximize network reliability.
• To address the challenge of ensuring data collection reliability in heterogeneous WSNs.

Main Methods:

• Defined reliability as the probability of sinks collecting data from a specified number of sensors.
• Introduced and examined a dedicated reliability metric.
• Employed an algorithm based on the modified factoring method for metric computation.
• Developed a heuristic algorithm for optimal sink placement.

Main Results:

• The proposed reliability metric effectively quantifies network dependability.
• The heuristic algorithm demonstrates effectiveness in optimizing sink placement for enhanced reliability.
• The study provides a framework for improving data collection success rates in WSNs.

Conclusions:

• The developed reliability metric and sink placement algorithm contribute to more robust and survivable heterogeneous WSNs.
• These approaches are crucial for overcoming the inherent unreliability of wireless environments and sensor failures.
• Optimized sink placement is key to maximizing data integrity and network performance in complex WSN deployments.