A PSO-Optimized Minimum Spanning Tree-Based Topology Control Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are networks of autonomous nodes used for monitoring an environment. Topology control is one of the most fundamental problems in WSNs. To overcome high connectivity redundancy and low structure robustness in traditional methods, a PSO-optimized minimum spanning tree-based topology control scheme is proposed in this paper. In the proposed scheme, we transform the problem into a model of multicriteria degree constrained minimum spanning tree (mcd-MST) and design a nondominated discrete particle swarm optimization (NDPSO) to deal with this problem. To obtain a better approximation of true Pareto front, the multiobjective strategy with a fitness function based on niche and phenotype sharing function is applied in NDPSO. Furthermore, a topology control scheme based on NDPSO is proposed. Simulation results show that NDPSO can converge to the non-dominated front quite evenly, and the topology derived under the proposed topology control scheme has lower total power consumption, higher robust structure, and lower contention among nodes.