Using Lexicographical Method to Achieve Network Lifetime Maximization in Wireless Sensor Networks

For wireless sensor networks, maximizing the network lifetime and maximizing fair rate allocation for all data sources are the two important performance considerations. The two objectives are correlated with each other and cannot be maximized simultaneously. So, a lexicographic method is adopted to solve this problem. First, we recursively induce the max-min lifetime for the cluster header. Then, under the given lifetime, we formulate the rate allocation problem as an optimization problem, and advocate the use of lexicographic method to achieve the optimal rate allocation solution. Our theoretical analysis and simulation results validate the effectiveness of the algorithm.