Maximizing the lifetime in Hybrid Wireless Sensor Networks

Po-yen (Dustin) Wang

CS HDR MONITORING

DATE: 2011-06-01
TIME: 15:00:00 - 15:30:00
LOCATION: CSIT Seminar Room, N101
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ABSTRACT:
With the advance in micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) and wireless communication, it is now possible to produce low cost wireless sensors powered by batteries or solar energy for sensing and wireless communication. These sensor nodes work together to form a dynamic network for specific applications such as monitoring of a region of interest.

Depending on energy sources, wireless sensor networks can be classified into non-renewable energy sources, (i.e., battery-powered) or renewable energy source, (i.e., solar-powered) WSNs. A severe limitation of battery-powered WSN is a short network lifetime due to the limited-energy batteries and much research thus focused on the network lifetime maximization. Recent development however has allowed renewable energy sources like solar energy to be utilized. Even though there are several constraints such as solar energy can only be harvested in sunny days, the solar energy technologies still remain costly alternatives to the readily fossil fuel technologies, the lifetime of solar sensors can be considered to be infinite, with appropriate energy management. Thus, to prolong the network lifetime, we propose a Hybrid Wireless Sensor Network which consists of Battery-powered nodes (BNs) and solar-powered nodes (SNs). In hybrid WSNs, it is desirable that SNs aggregate and relay the traffic from nearby BNs due to the energy harvesting abilities of SNs. But this will make the SNs prone to failures in unpredictable situations like inconsistent weather conditions as well as obstacles blocking sunlight. In this talk we propose an algorithm for maximizing the network lifetime of such a hybrid WSN.
BIO:
Dustin is a PhD student with the Algorithm and Data Group