A lifetime enhancement protocol in cluster‐based wireless sensor networks with guaranteed delay

Wireless sensor networks nowadays find application in all the fields of the world. Rare event detection is an important application in which the wireless sensor network is used. In the case of rare event detection, event of interest or the important event occurs very rarely. Battery‐powered sensor nodes are deployed to detect the event and report to the base station. Sensing and communicating the low priority events happen in major portion of the lifetime for the sensor nodes. However, if the event occurs, then it should be detected and communicated at the earliest to the base station or to the sink node. To reduce the network traffic due to low priority data, we propose a cross layered algorithm to improve the lifetime of the sensor nodes in the case of clustered architecture. In spite of the increase in the network lifetime, the time to detect and communicate to the base station is maintained as that of the traditional clustering approach. The proposed algorithm is simulated, and results show significant improvement in the lifetime of the sensor nodes with guaranteed latency. In this paper, we also suggest methods to support the latency to sensor nodes on priority basis for continuous reporting.