Holistic Analysis of Reliability and Lifetime Tradeoff in Sensor Networks

Abstract

Network lifetime has been the most commonly employed metric for characterization of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in the literature. Network reliability is also an important aspect of WSNs, especially, deployed for critical missions. However, there is a tradeoff between maximizing the network lifetime and reliability. In this study, we investigate the impact of increasing network reliability in terms of k-connectivity and network lifetime through a mathematical programming framework. We explored a large parameter space to quantitatively characterize this tradeoff. Our results reveal that increasing k leads to significant decrease of network lifetime due to the necessity to utilize energy inefficient routing paths.