Analysis of Power-aware Buffering Schemes in Wireless Sensor Networks

TL;DR

This paper compares fixed-size and fixed-interval buffering schemes in wireless sensor networks, revealing that fixed-interval schemes are more robust to data size variation and providing insights for optimizing power consumption and network lifespan.

Contribution

It offers a theoretical analysis of data size variation effects on buffering schemes and establishes power consumption relationships in data collection trees.

Findings

Fixed-interval buffering is immune to data size variation effects.

Data size variation negatively impacts fixed-size buffering power efficiency.

Guidance for optimal buffer size to maximize sensor network lifespan.

Abstract

We study the power-aware buffering problem in battery-powered sensor networks, focusing on the fixed-size and fixed-interval buffering schemes. The main motivation is to address the yet poorly understood size variation-induced effect on power-aware buffering schemes. Our theoretical analysis elucidates the fundamental differences between the fixed-size and fixed-interval buffering schemes in the presence of data size variation. It shows that data size variation has detrimental effects on the power expenditure of the fixed-size buffering in general, and reveals that the size variation induced effects can be either mitigated by a positive skewness or promoted by a negative skewness in size distribution. By contrast, the fixed-interval buffering scheme has an obvious advantage of being eminently immune to the data-size variation. Hence the fixed-interval buffering scheme is a risk-averse strategy for its robustness in a variety of operational environments. In addition, based on the fixed-interval buffering scheme, we establish the power consumption relationship between child nodes and parent node in a static data collection tree, and give an in-depth analysis of the impact of child bandwidth distribution on parent's power consumption. This study is of practical significance: it sheds new light on the relationship among power consumption of buffering schemes, power parameters of radio module and memory bank, data arrival rate and data size variation, thereby providing well-informed guidance in determining an optimal buffer size (interval) to maximize the operational lifespan of sensor networks.