A Survey on Data Aggregation Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of sensor nodes and the sensor nodes are capable of collecting, sensing and gathering data from environment. These networks have huge application in disaster management, habitat monitoring, security and military, etc. Wireless sensor nodes are very small in size and very low battery power and have limited processing capability. We focus on data-aggregation in wireless sensor networks. Data aggregation is a very important technique in WSNs and helps in reducing the energy consumption by eliminating redundancy. The main goal of data aggregation is to collect and gather data in an energy efficient manner so that network lifetime is improved. In this paper we present a survey of data aggregation techniques and algorithms in wireless sensor networks. We compare and contrast different techniques as well as algorithms on the basis of performance measures such as lifetime, energy efficiency, latency, data accuracy and transmissions policies.