Lossless Data Compression Algorithm to Save Energy in Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

In the Internet of Things system, including wireless sensor networks, energy savings are a matter of prime concern today. While electronic devices as well as software have been developed ceaselessly, the technology of battery development does not keep pace. Beside that each sensor node usually uses batteries for power, these sensors often cannot change or recharge in the usual way. In all the operations of a sensor node, wireless communication is the most energy consuming operations. So, in order to extend the life of the battery in the sensor node, we need to limit the transmission of information over the wireless network, however, we must also ensure that the sensor node transmits enough information about the host. We can do this by data compression. We have to choose an efficient and simple data compression algorithm because energy, memory and computational resources of sensor node are very limited. In this article, we adjust a lossless data compression algorithm to suit the wireless sensor network and meet the requirements set forth above. Accompanying that, with the best knowledge we have, we also offer a comparison of the efficiency of this algorithm with two well-known compression algorithms, namely bzip2 and gzip.