Application of model predictive control in wireless sensor networks

Recent advance in integrated circuit design enables the steady development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and fast microprocessors are being equipped on senor nodes. Consequently, computational capacity of a sensor node increases, and it allows for the adoption of sophisticated optimization algorithms. This motivates us to investigate the applicability of model predictive control (MPC) in the context of WSNs. In this paper, first we attempt to summarize the on-going effort of applying MPC-based optimization in WSN-related research topics and then study an example of MPC-based power control in WSNs. Simulation results show that MPC-based power control algorithm is a promising candidate for applications in WSNs.