Transmission Schemes for Lifetime Maximization in Wireless Sensor Networks: Uncorrelated Source Observations

We study transmission schemes for lifetime maximization in wireless sensor networks. Specifically we consider the network where all the sensors observe uncorrelated signals and forward the quantized observations to a common fusion center. We demonstrate how the minimum node lifetime is maximized under individual estimation accuracy constraints through adapting transmission times and powers assigned to different sensor nodes. A partially distributed algorithm is proposed to implement joint time sharing and power control, for which each sensor node only needs local information and little common information. In addition, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for convergence of the algorithm. Simulation results show a significant lifetime gain over existing schemes, especially when the sensing environment becomes more heterogeneous and the number of nodes increases.