Energy Efficient Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks - Recent Trends & Research Challenges

Abstract

In recent times, Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks (HWSNs) are gaining increasing interest from various research communities due to their potential applications in large number of domains such as environmental applications, area surveillance and health monitoring. However, the performance of a HWSN primarily depends on a set of critical decision parameters including robustness, security, connectivity and efficient usage of energy and so on. Specifically, one of the most important research challenges is, enhancing the network lifetime of HWSNs, so that the object monitoring activities can be conducted without any interruptions. More specifically, Energy usage in a network is an essential factor, which directly influences the lifetime of the given network. In contrast, efficient energy utilization within a network can be achieved by means of grouping the nodes into clusters using effective clustering algorithms. In this paper, an overview of HWSNs is presented along with the different state-of-the-art techniques used for implementing energy efficient clustering strategies. Furthermore, this article also explores the future key directions and highlights the research challenges that need to be addressed in achieving energy efficient clustering in HWSNs.