A routing problem in static wireless ad hoc networks is considered as it arises in a rapidly
deployed, sensor based, monitoring system known as the wireless sensor network.
Information obtained by the monitoring nodes needs to be routed to a set of designated
gateway nodes. In these networks, every node is capable of sensing, data processing, and
communication, and operates on its limited amount of battery energy consumed mostly in
transmission and reception at its radio transceiver. If we assume that the transmitter power …

We show that the problem of routing messages in a wireless sensor network so as to
maximize network lifetime is NP-hard. In our model, the online model, each message has to
be routed without knowledge of future route requests. We develop also an online heuristic to
maximize network lifetime. Our heuristic, which performs two shortest path computations to
route each message, is superior to previously published heuristics for lifetime maximization–
our heuristic results in greater lifetime and its performance is less sensitive to the selection of …