Adaptive Modulation Scaling Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Zongkai YANG
Yong YUAN
Jianhua HE
Wenqing CHEN

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E88-B    No.3    pp.882-889
Publication Date: 2005/03/01
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 10.1093/ietcom/e88-b.3.882
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Ubiquitous Networks)
Category: Software Platform Technologies
Keyword: 
wireless sensor network,  modulation scaling,  queuing theory,  distributed control,  

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Summary: 
Limited energy is a big challenge for large scale wireless sensor networks (WSN). Previous research works show that modulation scaling is an efficient technique to reduce energy consumption. However, the impacts of using modulation scaling on packet delivery latency and loss are not considered, which may have adverse effects on the application qualities. In this paper, we study this problem and propose control schemes to minimize energy consumption while ensuring application qualities. We first analyze the relationships of modulation scaling and energy consumption, end-to-end delivery latency and packet loss ratio. With the analytical model, we develop a centralized control scheme to adaptively adjust the modulation levels, in order to minimize energy consumption and ensure the application qualities. To improve the scalability of the centralized control scheme, we also propose a distributed control scheme. In this scheme, the sink will send the differences between the required and measured application qualities to the sensors. The sensors will update their modulation levels with the local information and feedback from the sink. Experimental results show the effectiveness of energy saving and QoS guarantee of the control schemes. The control schemes can adapt efficiently to the time-varying requirements on application qualities.