A population based approach to model network lifetime in wireless sensor networks

ABSTRACT

The physical constraints of battery-powered sensors impose limitations on their processing capacity and longetivity. As battery power in the nodes decays, certain parts of the network may become disconnected or the coverage may shrink, thereby reducing the reliability and the potency of the sensor network. Since sensor networks operate unattended and without maintainence, it is imperative that network failures are detected early enough so that corrective measures can be taken.Existing research has primarily concentrated on developing algorithms, be it distributed or centralized, to optimize network longetivity metrics. For instance, [4, 5] propose MAC layer optimizations to prolong longetivity, while [7, 6] look at the problem from a Layer 3 perspective. Works along the lines of actually building network models for energy consumption are addressed in [2], [3], but these models fail to capture the interplay between a node's spatial location and it's energy consumption.In our current work, we develop an unifying framework to characterize the lifetime of such energy constrained networks, and obtain insights into their working. In particular, we employ a framework similar to population models for biological systems, to model the network lifetime. We consider both spatial scenarios, where a node's power consumption is governed by it's position in space as well as non spatial scenarios, where the node's location and power consumption model are independent entities.

REFERENCES

• 1: P. Leslie, "On the use of matrices in certain population mathematics," Biometrika, vol. 33, no. 3. pp, 183--212, November 1945.
• 2: Zhao, Y. J., Govindan, R., and Estrin, D., "Residual Energy Scans for Monitoring Wireless Sensor Networks," IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Orlando, Florida, 2002.
• 3: Raquel, M., Antonio, A., Ferreira, L., Badri N., "A More Realistic Energy Dissipation Model for Sensor Nodes," SBRC, 2004
• 4: Ye, W., Heidemann, J., and Estrin, D., "An Energy-Efficient MAC Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks," Proceedings of the IEEE Infocom,' 2002.
• 5: Wendi Rabiner Heinzelman , Anantha Chandrakasan , Hari Balakrishnan, Energy-Efficient Communication Protocol for Wireless Microsensor Networks, Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences-Volume 8, p.8020, January 04-07, 2000
• 6: Misra, A., and Banerjee, S., "MRPC: Maximising Network Lifetime for Reliable Routing in Wireless Networks," IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Orlando, Florida, 2002.
• 7: Shah, R. C, and Rabaey, J. M, "Energy Aware Routing for Low Energy Ad-hoc Sensor Networks," IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Orlando, Florida, 2002.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Wireless communication

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING
      I.6.5 Model Development

General Terms:
Performance, Theory