Impact of Limiting of Hop Count on Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) comprised of a plurality of sensor nodes powered by their internal batteries and one or more base stations. Efficient utilization of the energy resources leads to prolonged network lifetime. In this study, the effects of limiting the total hop count within the network on network lifetime is investigated by using a mixed integer programming (MIP) framework. Our results show that when the hop count of network is limited by minimum hop count, lifetime of network can decrease by % 40 of the lifetime obtained without any constraint on hop count. If hop count limit of network is increased by % 10, lifetime of network can reach % 98 of maximum lifetime obtained without any restrictions on hop count.