An efficient distributed max-flow algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

• The max-flow problem and its applications in WSN are described.
• Some obstacles are described and six independent heuristics are proposed to overcome them.
• Comprehensive theoretical analysis is provided.
• Simulation results show a significant improvement in time and message overheads.

The max-flow problem (MFP) is one of the most explored problems in the area of combinatorial optimization and it has a wide variety of potential applications in computer networks, especially in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In this paper, we propose a WSN-specific solution to MFP based on the well-known push-relabel method. In our solution we provide several techniques and heuristics to implement asynchronous communication, reduce message complexity, support adaptability, and satisfy soft real-time requirements. Because these heuristics are independent, we can adjust the algorithm by applying some heuristics and ignoring the others, according to the application requirements. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm makes a significant improvement in the case of message and time complexities in comparison with the best existing algorithms.