Research on connectivity and sparseness of wireless sensor network topology

Connectivity and sparseness are important topological property of wireless sensor network. A good network topology can guarantee both connectivity and lowered density of connected-edges simultaneously. Aiming at this problem, firstly, the property of phase transition for connectivity probability of wireless sensor networks is analyzed. The results show that there exists a critical communication radius on which probability of connectivity sharply changes from 0 to 1. The shortest communication radius which ensuring network connectivity can be found based on this property. Secondly, on the precondition that network is connected using the shortest communication radius, a sparse network topology optimized algorithm which using the degree and betweenness as a comprehensive criteria to measure the relative importance of individual node in the network is proposed. This method restricts the numbers of connected-edges for each node by deleting some redundant links. The simulation results demonstrate that the method can ensure the connectivity, lower the density of link efficiently and simplify the structure of the network. It has minor effect on average shortest path length.