Distributed cooperative routing algorithms for maximizing network lifetime

In this paper, we study the impact of cooperative routing for maximizing the network lifetime in sensor network applications. We assume nodes in the network are equipped with a single omnidirectional antenna and they perform cooperative transmission to achieve transmit diversity. We propose a joint cooperative transmission and energy aware routing algorithm to prolong the network lifetime. In contrast to the previous works, our approach uses the maximum lifetime power allocation, instead of minimum power allocation. Using the maximum lifetime power allocation, the cooperative nodes allocate their transmit power according to the channel condition and the residual energy in the nodes. Our proposed scheme combines the maximum lifetime power allocation and the energy aware routing to maximize the network lifetime. We study the performance of the cooperative routing in terms of network lifetime (defined as the time until the first node dies) and the total delivered packets before the first node dies. We demonstrate that the proposed solution achieves 1 ~ 3.5 and 1 ~ 2 times longer network lifetime and more total delivered packets compared to noncooperative routing, when it is used with MTE and FA algorithms, respectively. Furthermore, the maximum lifetime power allocation achieves 1 ~ 2 times longer lifetime, compared to minimum power allocation in MTE and FA routing schemes. We also provide distributed implementation of the proposed algorithm.