Maximizing lifetime sequences of wireless sensor networks powered by renewable energy
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate conditional and unconditional lifetime sequence of wireless sensor networks (WSN) that have many important practical applications. A significant limitation for WSN is its short lifetime due to the limited capacity of the battery. Renewable energy can significantly extend the lifetime of WSN. In this paper, we investigate the whole sequence of lifetimes of every sensor in WSN, as different application scenarios have different requirement on how many sensors can die until the WSN is no longer functional.
Design/methodology/approach
Linear programming formulation was used to investigate both the conditional and unconditional lifetime sequence of WSN. The lifetime sequences of WSN without and with differ levels of solar power were studied.
Findings
This investigation of lifetime sequences discovered three interesting phenomena: the sensors that die first are on the peripheral of the network, rather close to the base station; multiple sensors tend to die simultaneously; and the lifetimes of sensors that die later can be extended by renewable energy much more significantly than those that die early, which is very good news to applications that can tolerate the death of a fraction of sensors.
Originality/value
In this paper, the first optimization formulation for maximizing both unconditional and conditional lifetime sequences of WSNs with renewable energy sources was provided. Only the conditional lifetime sequence has been investigated in a previous work, but this method runs n-times faster than the previous work, with n being the number of nodes in the WSN.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This material is based upon work supported by the US Department of Homeland Security under Award Number: 2008-ST-061-BS0002. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the US Department of Homeland Security.
Citation
Abu-Baker, A., Huang, H. and Misra, S. (2014), "Maximizing lifetime sequences of wireless sensor networks powered by renewable energy", Sensor Review, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp. 374-381. https://doi.org/10.1108/SR-09-2012-704
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited