Energy-efficient and fault-tolerant evolution models for large-scale wireless sensor networks: a complex networks-based approach

In this paper, we present three network evolution models for generating fault-tolerant and energy- efficient large-scale peer-to-peer wireless sensor networks (WSNs) based on complex networks theory. Being scale-free is one of the intrinsic features of complex networks-based evolution models that generates fault- tolerant topologies. In this work, we argue that fault- tolerant topologies are not necessarily energy efficient. The three proposed energy-aware evolution models are energy-aware common neighbors (ECN), energy- aware large degree promoted (ELDP) and energy-aware large degree demoted (ELDD). ECN considers neighborhood overlap, whereas ELDP and ELDD consider topological overlap for node attachment. The ELDP model promotes the establishment of links to nodes with a large degree, whereas the ELDD model demotes this strategy. Performance evaluations demonstrate that the proposed models outperform a candidate clustering-based model, thereby providing greater energy savings and fault- tolerance. Among the proposed models, ECN is the winner in-terms of energy efficiency, ELDD performs best in- terms of fault-tolerance, and ELDP conveniently provides balance between the two.