Total Power Minimization Using Dual Power Assignment in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

To minimize the energy consumption in a wireless sensor network (WSN) is very important task as the sensors are generally very small and have a power battery attached to it which cannot have very large power capacity. In a wireless sensor network any sensor node must be able to retrieve information from any other sensor node in the network, so the connectivity of the network is also very important concern. The range assignment problem in WSN is to assign transmission power levels to the nodes of a WSN such that some constraints like connectivity is satisfied. In practice it is usually impossible to assign arbitrary power levels to the sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network. Most sensors available in the market operate with discrete power levels. So in this paper we consider the sensor nodes with only two possible power levels assigned to them. Our aim is to minimize the total power consumption while maintaining the strong connectivity between the sensor nodes in the network. We present a nearly optimal heuristic algorithm and also the experimental results. Our SCDPA algorithm gives an average approximation of 1.51. We also present a heuristic algorithm to minimize total power using 3 power levels.