Wireless sensor networks are used to monitor physical or environmental conditions such as temperature and pressure as well as to study the quality of certain environmental and natural entities like air and water bodies by collecting data about the various components present in the air/water at a given spot and time. But the complete data generated by the nodes in each iteration is not always useful, as most of them give the redundant information or details which does not provide any essential information, just bulge up the amount of data being transmitted. Therefore, this paper aims to formulate an early prevention method (EPM) which not only gives a way to detect failed nodes, but also increases the overall efficiency of the network by reducing the overhead at the sink. Copyright © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.