A cross-layer strategy for energy-efficient reliable delivery in wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we investigate the problem of the lifetime maximization in wireless sensor networks under the constraint of end-to-end transmission success probability, by adopting a cross-layer strategy that considers physical layer (i.e., power control), MAC layer (i.e., retransmission control) and network layer (i.e., routing protocol) jointly. We decouple the problem into separate sub-problems of each layer and propose the optimal algorithm as well as an alternative heuristic algorithm with lower complexity for each sub-problem. We demonstrate through computer simulations that a trade-off relation exists between the network lifetime maximization and the reliability constraint, and the strategy that is designed by combining the proposed algorithm at each layer can significantly increase the network lifetime. We also investigate the effect of the retransmission control on the energy efficiency for different energy consumption models. Simulation results reveal that multiple retransmissions with low power yield little gain when the link distance is short and the power conversion efficiency of the amplifier increases with the transmission power.