Cross-Layer Based Rate Control for Lifetime Maximization in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), lifetime maximization is a critical issue because of the restricted power supply. Therefore, the objective of lifetime maximization is to save energy for each sensor node. However, the application performance depends strongly on the amount of data gathered from each source node in the network. Higher data rates causes greater sensing and communication costs resulting in a reduction of the overall network lifetime. There is thus an inherent trade-off in maximizing the network lifetime and the application performance. In this paper, we take both application performance and lifetime maximization into account, use a cross layer optimization framework and propose a distributed rate control algorithm. Our numerical result shows that our scheme can maximize the network lifetime and guarantee the application performance.