Efficient Data Collection for Wireless Networks: Delay and Energy Tradeoffs

This paper studies efficient data collection for wireless sensor networks. The paper presents efficient distributed algorithms with approximately the minimum delay, or the minimum messages to be sent by all nodes, or the minimum total energy costs by all nodes. The paper analytically proved that all the methods are either optimum or are within constants factor of the optimum. The paper then investigates the possibility of designing one universal method such that the delay, the messages sent by nodes, and the total energy costs by all nodes are all optimum or within constants factor of optimum.