Upper Bound of Sensor Network Lifetime – A Flow Optimization Approach

The growth in technology, digital electronics and wireless communications has made sensor networks a reality. The low cost, low power but multifunctional sensor nodes communicate with other nodes and need to be energy efficient in order to save battery power. This paper deals with the problem of sensor network lifetime optimization. By setting up data flows among sensor nodes as optimization variables, the framework will set up an optimum network with maximum lifetime. Modified simulated annealing has been used to deal with the flow reorganization problem. We will show lifetime results versus number of active sensors and population using a C++ implementation of our framework and the modified simulated annealing approach. This framework is not a routing protocol and since it does not use any special routing strategies to maximize the lifetime it can be used as a benchmark for WSN routing protocols. It can be used to see how simple routing methods compare with the optimal strategy.