With the increasing number of ubiquitous terminals and the continuous expansion of network scale, the problem of unbalanced energy consumption in sensor networks has become increasingly prominent in recent years. However, a node scheduling strategy or an energy consumption optimization algorithm may be not enough to meet the requirements of large-scale application. To address this problem a type of Annulus-based Energy Balanced Data Collection (AEBDC) method is proposed in this paper. The circular network is divided into several annular sectors of different sizes. Nodes in the same annulus-sector form a cluster. Based on this model, a multi-hop data forwarding strategy with the help of the candidate cluster headers is proposed to balance energy consumption during transmission and to avoid buffer overflow. Meanwhile, in each annulus, there is a Wireless Charging Vehicle (WCV) that is responsible for periodically recharging the cluster headers as well as the candidate cluster headers. By minimizing the recharging cost, the energy efficiency is enhanced. Simulation results show that AEBDC can not only alleviate the "energy hole problem" in sensor networks, but also effectively prolong the network lifetime.
Keywords: annulus-sector; data forwarding strategy; energy balance; wireless charging vehicles; wireless sensor networks.