Communication Cost Reduction by Data Aggregation: A Survey

Wireless Sensor Networks have gained wide popularity in the recent years for its high-ranking applications such as remote environment monitoring, target tracking, safety-critical monitoring etc. However Wireless Sensor Networks face many constraints like low computational power, small storage, and limited energy resources. One of the important issues in wireless sensor network is to increase the network lifetime to keep the network operational as long as possible. In this survey paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing literature on techniques and protocols for data aggregation to reduce communication cost and increase network lifetime in wireless sensor networks.