Energy-aware scheduling with deadline and reliability constraints in wireless networks

In this paper, we address the problem of scheduling a set of periodic real-time messages in a wireless network with the objective of minimizing the total energy consumption while meeting deadline and reliability constraints. We formally prove that this problem is NP-hard and solve it in two stages. First, we consider a simple model that assumes that the wireless channel is completely reliable and the network is fully provisioned. Using the technique of employing multiple hop-by-hop transmissions instead of a single direct hop transmission as the basis, we prove that the strategy of choosing the hop distances such that they are equidistant is optimal in terms of energy consumption under the deadline constraint. Based on the intuition provided by the optimal strategy, we present heuristic scheduling algorithms for a more realistic wireless channel model and network condition. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheduling algorithms provide significant energy savings over the baseline algorithms