Evaluation of metadata-based data aggregation scheme in clustering wireless sensor networks

In a wireless sensor network (WSN) system, an important problem for the special application, in which the battery of a sensor node cannot be exchanged, is how to extend the life time of the entire WSN system. In the past we proposed an improvement to the LEACH protocol to lengthen the lifetime of a WSN system and showed the superiority of our proposal by simulation. In this paper we set up an experimental WSN system using sensor nodes called "MICAz". We try to measure the lifetime of the WSN systems based on the protocol of our proposal and to compare with the simulation result. We confirm by experiment that the lifetime of our proposal is up to 1.2 times longer than that of the LEACH protocol at one sensor node. The protocol of our proposal is sufficiently effective though the effect of the simulation cannot be achieved.