An Energy-Based Stochastic Model for Wireless Sensor Networks

We propose an energy-based stochastic model of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) where each sensor node is randomly and alternatively in an active and a sleep mode. We first investigate the sensor model and derive the formula of the steady-state probability when there are a number of data packets in different sensor modes. We then determine important sensor’s performance measures in terms of energy consumptions, average data delay and throughput. The novelty of this paper is in its development of a stochastic model in WSN with active/sleep feature and the explicit results obtained for above mentioned energy consumption and performance characteristics. These results are expected to be useful as the fundamental results in the theoretical analysis and design of various hybrid WSNs with power mode consideration.