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Energy-efficient routing is a critical problem in multihop wireless networks due to the severe power constraint of wireless nodes. Despite its importance and many research efforts toward it, a distributed routing algorithm that maximizes network lifetime is still missing. To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel utility-based nonlinear optimization formulation to the maximum lifetime routing problem. Based on this formulation, a fully distributed localized routing algorithm is further presented, which is proved to converge at the optimal point, where the network lifetime is maximized. Solid theoretical analysis and simulation results are presented to validate the proposed solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A network of sensors can be used to obtain state-based data from the area in which they are deployed. To reduce costs, the data, sent via intermediate sensors to a sink, are often aggregated (or compressed). This compression is done by a subset of the sensors called ‘aggregators.’ Inasmuch as sensors are usually equipped with small and unreplenishable energy reserves, a critical issue is to strategically deploy an appropriate number of aggregators so as to minimize the amount of energy consumed by transporting and aggregating the data. In this paper, the authors first study single-level aggregation and propose an Energy-Efficient Protocol for Aggregator Selection (EPAS) protocol. Then, they generalize it to an aggregation hierarchy and extend EPAS to Hierarchical EPAS. The optimal number of aggregators with generalized compression and power-consumption models was derived, and fully distributed algorithms for aggregator selection were presented. Simulation results show that the algorithms significantly reduce the energy consumption for data collection in wireless sensor networks. Moreover, the algorithms do not rely on particular routing protocols and are thus applicable to a broad spectrum of application environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]