On the fundamental capacity and lifetime limits of energy-constrained wireless sensor networks

Energy constraints on sensor nodes pose significant challenges towards extending operational lifetimes and sustainable capacities of wireless sensor networks. We seek to answer two fundamental questions with respect to energy-constrained sensor networks. First, what is the operational lifetime of a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inProceedings. RTAS 2004. 10th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, 2004 pp. 2 - 9
Main Authors Zhihau Hu, Baochun Li
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Alamitos CA IEEE 2004
IEEE Computer Society
Subjects
Applied sciences
Capacitive sensors
Computer science; control theory; systems
Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface
Costs
Data communication
Energy management
Energy states
Exact sciences and technology
Interference constraints
Optimal control
Propagation losses
Software
Throughput
Wireless sensor networks
Energy analysis
Energy consumption
Density measurement
Measurement sensor
Distributed system
Modeling
Real time system
Boarded computer
Power control
Optimal control
Distributed control
Wireless network
Asymptotic approximation
Sensor array
Optimal control (mathematics)
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Summary:Energy constraints on sensor nodes pose significant challenges towards extending operational lifetimes and sustainable capacities of wireless sensor networks. We seek to answer two fundamental questions with respect to energy-constrained sensor networks. First, what is the operational lifetime of a particular wireless sensor network under the control of optimal power management schemes? With an adequate definition of operational lifetimes, our asymptotic analysis shows that, with fixed node densities, operational lifetime of sensor networks decreases in the order of 1/n as the number of initially deployed nodes n grows. Second, what is the impact of constrained energy levels on the maximum sustainable throughput in sensor networks? Even with renewable energy sources on each of the sensors (e.g., solar energy sources), our analysis concludes that the maximum sustainable throughput in energy-constrained sensor networks scales worse than the capacity based on interference among concurrent transmissions as long as the physical network size grows with n in the order greater than log n. In this case, when the number of nodes is sufficiently high, the energy-constrained network capacity dominates.
ISBN:0769521487
9780769521480
ISSN:1545-3421
2642-7346
DOI:10.1109/RTTAS.2004.1317243