Dynamic control and power management algorithm for continuous wireless monitoring in sensor networks

Abstract

We discuss a novel control methodology for power management in heterogeneous distributed sensor networks. We present an event based control optimization formulation of the resource management problem and discuss a method to adaptively change the desired system performance of the sensor network in response to events. This functionality is critical in field-deployable sensor networks where continuous operation is expensive and system adaptation is critical for extended operation in the face of dynamic external events. We show results on various synthetic heterogeneous sensor networks where only partially accurate information about the sensing system is available and illustrate the efficacy of the control algorithm in handling such incorrect models with a negligible increase in transmission of the optimal control settings. We show that the run-time performance of the control algorithm scales quadratically with increasing number of sensors.