A COMPARISON OF SERIAL VERSUS PARALLEL ALGORITHMS FOR ENERGY CONSUMPTION IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Abstract

The majority of low-end sensors in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) operate on batteries, which either cannot be replaced or are not practical to replace. Therefore, it is important to measure the total energy consumption in WSNs, in order to minimize power consumption and maximize network lifespan. Many researchers have been devoting their efforts into this area, which shows that a heterogeneous network produces a better solution to prolonging the network lifespan. So far as we know, the algorithms for minimizing the energy consumption have all been implemented in serial algorithms. In this work, we propose a parallel programming approach for optimizing the minimum energy consumption and maximizing the lifespan of WSNs. The results from an extensive set of experiments on a large number of simulated sensor networks illustrate the performance superiority of the proposed parallel approach over an existing serial algorithm and confirms a parallel solution will provide faster results.