Increasing network lifetime using data compression in wireless sensor networks with energy harvesting

In wireless sensor networks powered by battery-limited energy harvesting, sensor nodes that have relatively more energy can help other sensor nodes reduce their energy consumption by compressing the sensing data packets in order to consequently extend the network lifetime. In this article, we consider a data compression technique that can shorten the data packet itself to reduce the energies consumed for packet transmission and reception and to eventually increase the entire network lifetime. First, we present an energy consumption model, in which the energy consumption at each sensor node is derived. We then propose a data compression algorithm that determines the compression level at each sensor node to decrease the total energy consumption depending on the average energy level of neighboring sensor nodes while maximizing the lifetime of multihop wireless sensor networks with energy harvesting. Numerical simulations show that the proposed algorithm achieves a reduced average energy consumption while extending the entire network lifetime.