  A local-area and energy-efficient (LAEE) evolution model for wireless sensor
networks is proposed. The process of topology evolution is divided into two
phases. In the first phase, nodes are distributed randomly in a fixed region.
In the second phase, according to the spatial structure of wireless sensor
networks, topology evolution starts from the sink, grows with an
energy-efficient preferential attachment rule in the new node's local-area, and
stops until all nodes are connected into network. Both analysis and simulation
results show that the degree distribution of LAEE follows the power law. This
topology construction model has better tolerance against energy depletion or
random failure than other non-scale-free WSN topologies.
