Strategies of data collection in tree-based wireless sensor networks

Data collection is a fundamental operation in wireless sensor networks where sensor nodes measure attributes about a phenomenon of interest and transmits their readings to a common base station. We classify the algorithms according to their common design objectives, identifying the following four as the most fundamental and most studied with respect to data collection in WSNs: (i) minimizing schedule length, (ii) minimizing latency, (iii) minimizing energy consumption. We explore and evaluate a number of different techniques using realistic simulation models under the many-to-one communication paradigm known as convergecast. In sensor networks data are transferred from the sensor nodes to a few central data collectors.