Power efficient 3-dimensional topology control for ad hoc and sensor networks

Topology control in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks has been heavily studied recently. Different geometric topologies were proposed to be the underlying network topologies to achieve the sparseness of the communication networks or to guarantee the package delivery of specific routing methods. However, most of the proposed topology control algorithms were only applied to 2-dimensional (2D) networks where all nodes are distributed in a 2D plane. In practice, the ad hoc and sensor networks are often deployed in 3-dimensional (3D) space, such as notebooks in a multi-floor building and sensor nodes in a forest. This paper seeks to investigate power efficient topology control protocols for 3D ad hoc and sensor networks. In our new protocols, we extend several 2D geometric topologies to 3D case, and propose some new 3D Yao-based topologies. We also prove several properties (e.g., bounded degree and constant power stretch factor) for them in 3D space. The simulation confirms our theoretical proofs for these proposed 3D topologies.