Delay-bounded event detection in energy harvesting sensor networks

In many sensor network applications, sink node needs to actively communicate with other sensor nodes in order to perform event detection operations. For those applications, there is usually a delay bound associated with them and require the messages sent to be received within a designated time bound. In this paper, we address the event detection problems in an energy harvesting sensor network where energy efficiency and data freshness need to be balanced. To solve this problem, we propose a utility-based delay bound scheme for event detection, MaxOpUtility-based scheme. MaxOpUtility offers the ability to increase reliability through relay nodes selection as well as to ensure the timeliness. In addition, we show how nodes in the network can cooperatively bound end-to-end delay with maximum utility. Extensive simulations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of our approach compared with the optimal one. Meanwhile, we demonstrate that our solution is able to effectively provide delay bound guarantee in energy harvesting networks.