Building Hierarchical Topologies

The previous chapter discusses how changing the transmission power of the nodes reduces the network topology, saves energy, and increases the lifetime of the network while preserving connectivity and coverage. However, this approach does not prevent the transmission of redundant information when several nodes are close to each other and may not simplify the network topology enough as to make wireless sensor networks scalable for large deployments. This chapter explains a different approach to topology construction, the hierarchical topology construction approach, which addresses the scalability problem and facilitates the aggregation of information for additional energy savings.