A novel transmission range adjustment strategy for energy hole avoiding in wireless sensor networks

Energy hole is an inherent problem, which leads to significant network lifetime reduction and much energy waste in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). To avoid energy holes, full consideration of energy consumption minimization (ECM) and energy consumption balancing (ECB) is badly needed. In this paper, we propose a novel transmission range adjustment strategy, in which ECM and ECB are jointly considered and fully reflected, to realize the objectives of energy hole avoiding and network lifespan prolonging for WSNs. Firstly, we propose a short-trip moving scheme in ant colony optimization (ACO), which can decrease algorithm complexity and improve convergence speed. Secondly, we present a concept of reference transmission distance (RTD) which helps to realize local ECM and ECB. Thirdly, we present a concept of energy per node (EPN) which is used to achieve global ECM and ECB. Finally, simulations are used to validate the effectiveness and superiority of our findings.