Energy Minimisation in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks with Mutual-Information Accumulation

In this paper, the problem of energy minimisation for a wireless multi-hop network with mutual-information accumulation and fading is addressed under end-to-end delay constraints. This problem splits into two separate subproblems. First of all, efficient resource allocations for given routes have to be determined. The optimisation of the resource allocation is done w.r.t. power allocations and time slot lengths (or equivalent rate allocations). A novel approach to determine an efficient resource allocation for given routes in fading environments is proposed. Furthermore, the routing problem is addressed. It will be shown that close to optimal results can be obtained by simple strategies using standard routing algorithms. Simulation results indicate that an exhaustive search or further algorithms with large effort are not reasonable for the considered energy minimisation problem. The additional computational effort is not justified by the achievable gain.