Comparing Several Power Allocation Strategies for Sensor Networks

The power consumption of sensors is a crucial point for developing large-scale sensor networks nowadays. Many methods are proposed in the literature in order to optimize the power allocation to the sensor nodes under several constraints and different system aspects. In the present publication, we present a uniform framework to enable the comparison of different power allocation methods within the same scenario. Five state-of-the-art optimization techniques are discussed and their performance is compared based on simulation results. Since the system performance is a function of the service lifetime, power consumption, parameter limitations and system reliability, particular scenarios are considered in order to obtain meaningful results for the sensitivity of all five optimization strategies.