Evolution of Scale-Free Wireless Sensor Networks with Feature of Small-World Networks

Scale-free network and small-world network are the most impacting discoveries in the complex networks theories and have already been successfully proved to be highly effective in improving topology structures of wireless sensor networks. However, currently both theories are not jointly applied to have further improvements in the generation of WSN topologies. Therefore, this paper proposes a cluster-structured evolution model of WSNs considering the characteristics of both networks. With introduction of energy sensitivity and maximum limitation of degrees that a cluster head could have, the performance of our model can be ensured. In order to give an overall assessment of lifting effects of shortcuts, four placement schemes of shortcuts are analyzed. The characteristics of small-world network and scale-free network of our model are proved via theoretical derivation and simulations. Besides, we find that, by introducing shortcuts into scale-free wireless sensor network, the performance of the network can be improved concerning energy-saving and invulnerability, and we discover that the schemes constructing shortcuts between cluster heads and the sink node have better promoted effects than the scheme building shortcuts between pairs of cluster heads, and the schemes based on the preferential principle are superior to the schemes based on the random principle.