A Cluster based Sensor-Selection Scheme for Energy-Efficient Agriculture Sensor Networks

Improving the energy-efficiency of remotely deployed sensor nodes in agriculture wireless networks is very challenging due to a lack of access to energy grid. Network clustering and limiting the amount of sensor data are among the various methods to improve the lifetime of these sensor nodes. In this work, an optimal sensor-selection scheme is proposed to improve the Quality of Service in clustered agriculture networks. the proposed method selects a limited number of sensor nodes to be active in each cluster. It considers the estimator performance while selecting limited sensor nodes for environmental monitoring. the optimal sensor-selection process considers the information of remaining energy of sensor nodes in agriculture wireless networks. the proposed method selects a limited number of nodes in each cluster while maximizing the estimator performance at the receiver. Our cluster based sensor-selection scheme optimizes the energy-efficiency in a distributed manner. Network clustering also ensures a uniform sensor-selection over a network area. Extensive experiments are conducted to analyse the performance of the proposed optimal sensor-selection method over different network scenarios. Our experimental results indicate significant improvements in energy-efficiency of agriculture wireless sensor networks and motivate the proposed method in practice.