Adjacency Matrix-Based Transmit Power Allocation Strategies in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we present an innovative transmit power control scheme, based on optimization theory, for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which use carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) with collision avoidance (CA) as medium access control (MAC) protocol. In particular, we focus on schemes where several remote nodes send data directly to a common access point (AP). Under the assumption of finite overall network transmit power and low traffic load, we derive the optimal transmit power allocation strategy that minimizes the packet error rate (PER) at the AP. This approach is based on modeling the CSMA/CA MAC protocol through a finite state machine and takes into account the network adjacency matrix, depending on the transmit power distribution and determining the network connectivity. It will be then shown that the transmit power allocation problem reduces to a convex constrained minimization problem. Our results show that, under the assumption of low traffic load, the power allocation strategy, which guarantees minimal delay, requires the maximization of network connectivity, which can be equivalently interpreted as the maximization of the number of non-zero entries of the adjacency matrix. The obtained theoretical results are confirmed by simulations for unslotted Zigbee WSNs.