To split or not to split? From the perspective of a delay-aware data collection network structure

Collecting data from massive numbers of individual nodes is always a challenging task in wireless sensor networks. The duration of a data collection process, which can greatly affect the detection capabilities of a network, should be reduced whenever possible. For scenarios where only a single cluster is allowed, the delay-aware data collection network structure can minimize the duration of a data collection process. The aim of this paper is to explore the possibilities of improving the original delay-aware network structure by splitting the single tree structure into multiple clusters. Analyses on the conditions and effects of splitting the aforementioned structure are presented. Based on the analyses, two novel network splitting algorithms using k-means clustering algorithms are proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed network splitting algorithms may further reduce the duration of a data collection process. With the help of the k-means algorithms, communication distance among sensor nodes can be further reduced especially for networks with large numbers of wireless sensor nodes.