Optimal Node Scheduling for Effective Energy Usage in Sensor Networks

Up until now, low power system approaches have been restricted to single physical systems. The recent emergence of distributed embedded systems has created a need for power optimization across individual system boundaries. In particular, a great deal of excitement has been generated by wireless ad-hoc sensor networks, which integrate communication, computation, and sensing elements into self-organizing, adaptive, and multi-functional systems. We address power management in these types of systems. We focus our attention on the problem of node scheduling for a minimum degree of coverage. We have developed provably optimal polynomial time algorithms. Furthermore, we analyze the scaling properties of the problem as the number of sensors in the network increase. Extensive simulations provide a number of interesting and important insights into power consumption trade-offs in sensor networks.