Maximum flow based model and method of the maximum lifetime problem of sensor networks

Energy is one of the most important resources in wireless sensor networks, and data transmission is a main energy consumers. So energy efficient communication protocols are very important to sensor networks. It is an essential issue in the research on energy efficient protocols that how long a sensor network can survive to the best advantage. We formalize the lifetime-maximizing problem to a multi-source multi-sink flow-maximizing problem on a directed graph with arc and vertex capacity powers. Then we propose a method to solve this kind of maximum flow problem. The method gives the value of maximum lifetime exactly and its computing complexity is low.