A Cross-Layer Optimization Approach for Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks: Coalition-Aided Data Aggregation, Cooperative Communication, and Energy Balancing

The authors take a cross-layer optimization approach to study energy efficient data transport in coalition-based wireless sensor networks, where neighboring nodes are organized into groups to form coalitions and sensor nodes within one coalition carry out cooperative communications. In particular, they investigate two network models: many-to-one sensor networks where data from one coalition are transmitted to the sink directly and multi-hop sensor networks where data are transported by intermediate nodes to reach the sink.