A hybrid model for enhancing management and performance of wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networking is an increasingly important technology that is used in a variety of applications, such as environmental monitoring, infrastructure management, public safety, medical, home and office security, transportation and military systems. However, until now, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and their applications have been developed without considering an integrated management solution. This thesis analyzes in detail emerging wireless sensor management schemes and proposes a hybrid network model that establishes a combination between event-driven and continuous WSNs. The main reasons behind the adoption of a hybrid strategy are to enhance WSNs' management schemes, to promote the productivity of the network resources and to solve energy management problems. The proposed strategy divides the network into two stages in which the first stage is an event-driven network and the second is a continuous one. Cluster heads were used as an interface between the two stages and periodically transmitted their data, depending on their availabiblity, to the sink node. Also, cluster heads played major roles WSN's management functional areas, especially in configuration, performance and accounting management. In this thesis, we build a simulation model to analyze different performance parameters of the proposed system and to find an optimum value T for cluster heads period.