Design approaches for optimizing power consumption of sensor node with N-policy M/G/1 queuing model

Energy saving is an important issue in wireless sensor networks for majority of sensor nodes equipped with non-rechargeable batteries. For increasing the lifetime of sensor networks, each node must conserve energy as much as possible. To prolong the lifetime of sensor nodes, most research works have focused on how to optimally increase the probability of sleeping states using multifarious wake-up strategies. Making things different, in this article, we propose a novel optimization framework for power consumption of sensor node with the N-policy M/G/1 queuing approach. There is a heavy overhead for packet collisions and channel contention resulting from restarting the process of medium contention. Based on the theory of N-policy M/G/1 queuing system with general startup time, our framework can be incorporated with most of existing MAC protocols to improve power consumption by alleviating total number of medium-contention throughout the lifetime of a generic sensor node. To meet the mission requirements in sensor networks, the proposed approach can also provide a design guideline for the sensor administrator to optimize relevant system parameters including power consumption and latency delay.