A Scale-Free Topology Construction Model for Wireless Sensor Networks

A local-area and energy-efficient (LAEE) evolution model for wireless sensor networks is proposed. The process of topology evolution is divided into two phases. In the first phase, nodes are distributed randomly in a fixed region. In the second phase, according to the spatial structure of wireless sensor networks, topology evolution starts from a network of very small size which contains the sink, grows with an energy-efficient preferential attachment rule in the new node's local-area, and stops until all nodes are connected into network. Both analysis and simulation results show that the degree distribution of LAEE follows the power law. The comparison shows that this topology construction model has better tolerance against energy depletion or random failure than other nonscale-free WSN topologies.