Adaptive combined power control and routing for lengthening connectivity in WSNs

Deployment of wireless sensor networks always faces the issue of energy limitation. Without appropriate control policy, data messages might be routed over already-exhausted routes, quickly disrupting network connectivity. If a node transmits data at an excessively high power level, it not only depletes its own energy budget wastefully, but also interferes in other parallel transmissions. In this study, we introduce a cooperative power control strategy in which nodes of routes jointly tune their transmit power regularly over time and upon route setup. Tuning is made under hints of surrounding nodes. Routes are selected based on link metrics that is a function of signal strength, remaining energy, and path loss. To keep balancing power consumption among nodes, energy-aware established routes are considered re-routing periodically. Transmit power of each node is set at a level is just high enough under the hint of its adjacent downstream node. Simulation outputs do demonstrate the soundness of our proposals with respect to connectivity and throughput.