Transmission Power Control for Link-Level Handshaking in Wireless Sensor Networks

In practical wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the main mechanism for link-level data exchange is through handshaking. To maximize the network lifetime, the transmission power levels for both data and acknowledgement (ACK) packets should be selected optimally. If the highest transmission power level is selected then the handshake failure is minimized, however, minimizing handshake failure does not necessarily result in the maximized lifetime due to the fact that for some links selection of the maximum transmission power may not be necessary. In this paper, we investigate the impact of optimal transmission power assignment for data and ACK packets on network lifetime in WSNs. We built a novel family of mathematical programming formulations to accurately model the energy dissipation in WSNs under practical assumptions by considering a wide range of energy dissipation mechanisms. We also investigate the validity of a commonly made assumption in wireless communication and networking research: lossless feedback channel (i.e., ACK packets never fail). Our results show that the global optimal assignment of data and ACK packets can be replaced with link scope power level assignment strategies without any significant deterioration of network lifetime. The assumption that ACK packets do not fail is shown to be misleading.