Cluster or tree? Toward a hybrid topology for sensor networks

Recently, the revolution in sensor networks has enabled the deployment of new services and applications that have made our life smarter and safer. Thanks to various types of devices (e.g. sensors) deployed in such networks, our planet has become entirely monitored while the collected data is communicated wirelessly for analysis and study. Unfortunately, integrating sensor networks into various applications is a challenging task for both researchers and industries. While the networks are characterized by their density deployment and the massive amount of collected data, the sensors have limited energy consumption that can quickly be depleted during communication operations. Subsequently, selecting the best network topology plays an essential role in improving the energy consumption in sensors which results in providing longer monitoring of a given area. The objective of this paper consists of two main parts. First, it evaluates the performance analysis of common topologies used by the researchers in sensor networks, i.e. cluster and tree schemes, while discussing their advantages and limitations. Then, it proposes a hybrid network topology, called CLEE, that takes the benefits of both topologies to enhance the network performance and save energy consumption. Typically, CLEE topology takes several parameters into consideration; among those are network dimension, number of sensors, sink position, and transmission range for efficient application surveillance. Through extensive simulations, this paper analyzes the performance of all network topologies, e.g. cluster, tree and CLEE, while evaluating their effect on different performance metrics. • Constrained node resources are a major challenge in wireless sensor network (WSN) • Selecting the best network topology plays an essential role in energy-saving WSN • Performance of cluster and tree-based topology is evaluated in this paper • A new hybrid topology called as CLEE is introduced to prolong both node and network lifetime