Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

640

Date

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Electrical and Computer Engr

Concentration

Computer Engineering

Committee Chair

Aaron Robinson

Committee Member

Bashir Morshed

Committee Member

Peter S Lau

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have become powerful tools for gathering and monitoring environmental data. These networking systems can be utilized for many different applications due to their autonomy, ability to withstand harsh conditions, and the reduced cost associated with their collection of data. These characteristics are beneficial across a wide range of applications including those specific to the military, environmental, industrial, and medical industries. Additionally, they become increasingly more relevant in remote sensing applications where size weight and power trade-offs are of particular importance. Conversely, these applications also demonstrate the Achilles heel of a large percentage of WSNs in that they run on limited power sources. Thus, energy efficiency is a major concern and therefore a significant amount of research has been dedicated to identifying methods of making WSNs as energy efficient as possible. The purpose of this paper is to detail a reactive wireless sensor network protocol that will minimize network overhead and energy consumption in an effort to provide longevity to the overall network. The underlying components of the Sensor-Triggered Efficient Routing protocol, STER, are covered and the asynchronous handshaking method used to transmit data between the sending and receiving nodes is also described. The power consumption performance results of STER are compared to those obtained from other protocols in the current literature. The data shows that implementation of the STER protocol expends the least amount of energy compared to the other wireless sensor network protocols designed for energy efficiency. Based on results, it can be concluded that specific applications where a spatially dense nodal network is feasible will have an increased life span with the implementation of STER.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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