In-network Data Aggregation Techniques for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

A sensor network consists of the random deployment of large numbers of tiny sized sensor nodes in a region of interest to detect the physical/environmental events and transmit the relevant data to the sink node through multihop communication. The nodes have many physical constraints like energy, memory, processing power, and hence the result is the limited or insufficient network lifetime of a network. To solve this problem, data gathering in an energy-efficient manner is an important task in the wireless sensor network to enhance network lifetime. Data aggregation is one such energy-efficient data gathering technique that reduces the data traffic and thereby the energy consumption substantially. The prime idea of the data aggregation is to gather, combine, and compress the data from various sensor nodes during transmission to the sink node. Among the available aggregation methods, in-network processing plays a major role to reduce the amount of data to be transmitted in the network. This article analyzes the various in-network data aggregation algorithms in detail and provides an insight into the techniques utilized.