Sleep scheduling for wireless sensor networks via network flow model

The pervasiveness and operational autonomy of mesh-based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) make them an ideal candidate in offering sustained monitoring functions at reasonable cost over a wide area. There has been a general consensus within the research community that it is of critical importance to jointly optimize protocol sublayers in order to devise energy-efficient, cost-effective, and reliable communication strategies for WSNs. This paper proposes a cross-layer organizational approach based on sleep scheduling, called Sense-Sleep Trees (SS-Trees), that aims to harmonize the various engineering issues and provides a method to increase the monitoring coverage and the operational lifetime of mesh-based WSNs engaged in wide-area surveillance applications. An integer linear programming (ILP) formulation based on network flow model is provided to determine the optimal SS-Tree structures for achieving such design goals.