Optimized packet size for energy efficient cooperative wireless ad-hoc networks

Energy consumption is a key issue in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. Cooperative communication represents a potential candidate to improve the energy efficiency of wireless networks and this efficiency can be further improved by considering the variable packet size. In this paper, we address the question of the optimal packet size for data that improves the efficiency of energy consumption in energy constrained wireless cooperative ad hoc networks. Energy efficiency is used as an optimization metric and the problem is formulated as a nonlinear optimization problem. The accurate solution of optimal problems is crucial and existing methods proposed for such formulation can still converge to a local solution. In this paper, a novel global optimization approach based on a branch and bound (BB) framework and convexification techniques that address the solution to global optimality known as αBB is introduced. The numerical results show that, this algorithm offers mathematical guarantees for convergence to a point arbitrarily close to the global minimum in reasonable computational time.