Distributed Optimal Rate-Reliability-Lifetime Tradeoff in Wireless Sensor Networks

TL;DR

This paper develops a distributed optimization framework to balance rate, reliability, and lifetime in energy-constrained wireless sensor networks, providing a practical algorithm and insights for parameter tuning.

Contribution

It introduces a novel convex formulation and a distributed subgradient algorithm for the rate-reliability-lifetime tradeoff in WSNs, addressing conflicting objectives.

Findings

The proposed algorithm converges efficiently in numerical tests.

Weight parameters significantly influence network performance.

Guidelines for setting parameters based on application needs are provided.

Abstract

The transmission rate, delivery reliability and network lifetime are three fundamental but conflicting design objectives in energy-constrained wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we address the optimal rate-reliability-lifetime tradeoff with link capacity constraint, reliability constraint and energy constraint. By introducing the weight parameters, we combine the objectives at rate, reliability, and lifetime into a single objective to characterize the tradeoff among them. However, the optimization formulation of the rate-reliability-reliability tradeoff is neither separable nor convex. Through a series of transformations, a separable and convex problem is derived, and an efficient distributed Subgradient Dual Decomposition algorithm (SDD) is proposed. Numerical examples confirm its convergence. Also, numerical examples investigate the impact of weight parameters on the rate utility, reliability utility and network lifetime, which provide a guidance to properly set the value of weight parameters for a desired performance of WSNs according to the realistic application's requirements.