Minimum power configuration in wireless sensor networks

This paper proposes the minimum power configuration (MPC) approach to energy conservation in wireless sensor networks. In sharp contrast to earlier research that treats topology control, power-aware routing, and sleep management in isolation, MPC integrates them as a joint optimization problem in which the power configuration of a network consists of a set of active nodes and the transmission powers of the nodes. We show through analysis that the minimum power configuration of a network is inherently dependent on the data rates of sources. We propose several approximation algorithms with provable performance bounds compared to the optimal solution, and a practical Minimum Power Configuration Protocol (MPCP) that can dynamically (re)configure a network to minimize the energy consumption based on current data rates. Simulations based on realistic radio models of the Mica2 motes show that MPCP can conserve significantly more energy than existing minimum power routing and topology control protocols.