L. Bölöni and D. Turgut

Should I send now or send later? A decision-theoretic approach to transmission scheduling in sensor networks with mobile sinks


Cite as:

L. Bölöni and D. Turgut. Should I send now or send later? A decision-theoretic approach to transmission scheduling in sensor networks with mobile sinks. Accepted for publication in Wiley's Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Journal (WCMC) (Special issue on Mobility Management and Wireless Access), 2007.

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Abstract:

Mobile sinks can significantly extend the lifetime of a sensor network by eliminating the need for expensive hop-by-hop routing. However, a sensor node might not always have a mobile sink in transmission range, or the mobile sink might be so far that the data transmission would be very expensive. In the latter case, the sensor node needs to make a decision whether it should send the data now, or take the risk to wait for a more favorable occasion. Making the right decisions in this \em transmission scheduling problem has significant impact on the performance and lifetime of the node. In this paper we investigate the fundamentals of the transmission scheduling problem for sensor networks with mobile sinks. We develop a dynamic programming based optimal algorithm for the case when the mobility of the sinks is known in advance. We develop two algorithms based on a decision theoretic approach. The first algorithm uses Markov Decision Processes with states without history information, the second algorithm encodes some elements of the history into the state. Through a series of experiments, we show that the decision theoretic approaches significantly outperform naive heuristics, and can have a performance close to that of the optimal approach, without requiring an advance knowledge of the mobility.

BibTeX:

@article{Boloni-2007-WCMC, 
   author = "L. B{\"o}l{\"o}ni and D. Turgut",
   title = "Should {I} send now or send later? {A} decision-theoretic approach to transmission scheduling in sensor networks with mobile sinks",
   journal = "Accepted for publication in Wiley's Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Journal (WCMC) (Special issue on Mobility Management and Wireless Access)",
   year = "2007",
   abstract = {   
      Mobile sinks can significantly extend the lifetime of a sensor network by
      eliminating the need for expensive hop-by-hop routing. However, a sensor
      node might not always have a mobile sink in transmission range, or the
      mobile sink might be so far that the data transmission would be very
      expensive. In the latter case, the sensor node needs to make a decision
      whether it should send the data now, or take the risk to wait for a more
      favorable occasion. Making the right decisions in this {\em transmission
      scheduling problem} has significant impact on the performance and lifetime
      of the node.
      In this paper we investigate the fundamentals of the transmission
      scheduling problem for sensor networks with mobile sinks. We develop a
      dynamic programming based optimal algorithm for the case when the mobility
      of the sinks is known in advance. We develop two algorithms based on a
      decision theoretic approach. The first algorithm uses Markov Decision
      Processes with states without history information, the second algorithm
      encodes some elements of the history into the state. Through a series of
      experiments, we show that the decision theoretic approaches significantly
      outperform naive heuristics, and can have a performance close to that of
      the optimal approach, without requiring an advance knowledge of the
      mobility.
     },
}

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