A QoS-Based Data Forwarding Network Selection Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks
Feng Zhao, Kai Wei and Hongbin Chen
Due to the low-cost, low-power features of wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes are unable to process the collected data in a high precision but need to transfer the data to a more powerful processing center such as the Internet. However, a sensor network is not directly connected to the Internet usually. Therefore, one has to select an appropriate data forwarding network to connect a sensor network to the Internet. To deal with this issue, a QoS-based data forwarding network selection algorithm is proposed. This algorithm is based on the application classification of sensor networks and can select the most appropriate data forwarding network by the application’s QoS requirement. Meanwhile, a gateway node selection algorithm is proposed to select the most suitable gateway node for the selected forwarding network. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can balance energy consumption and achieve longer network lifetime than the one without network selection and the simple weighting algorithm.
Keywords: Wireless sensor networks, heterogeneous networks, data forwarding network selection, analytic hierarchy process, energy efficiency, QoS