Abstract: Virtual backbone based on connected dominating set is a key technique for reducing the number of dominating node and constraining the searching space for the routing which plays an important role for optimizing the lifetime of wireless sensor networks.ViTAMin protocol not only turns off unnecessary nodes to generate virtual backbone,but also sends the data collected along the minimal energy consumption path to save energy.In light of the problem that ViTAMin may generate non-connected network and dominating nodes consume energy not equally,an energy efficient virtual backbone data gathering protocol (EEVB) was proposed.Theoretical analysis shows that EEVB is able to construct connected dominating set with time and message complexity of O(n),and simulation experiments confirm further that EEVB can construct smaller connected dominating set with low energy overhead and extend the life time of the network effectively.

Key words: Wireless sensor networks,Data gathering,Virtual backbone,Connected dominating set,Energy efficient