The Upper Bound of Lifetime on Fixed Energy Budget in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks have a wide range of potential, Practical and useful applications[1]. Sensor nodes monitor some surrounding environmental phenomenon, process the data obtained and forward this data towards a base station located on the periphery of the sensor network. Base station(s) collect the data from the sensor nodes and transmit this data to some remote control station. Sensor network models considered by most researchers have a single static base station located on the periphery of the sensor network [2], [3], [4], [5]. Most sensors are equipped with non-rechargeable batteries[6]. While the network as a whole is required to provide fine resolution monitoring for an extended period of time, the upper bound of lifetime is an important problem. In this work, we develop closed-form expressions of the upper bound of lifetime in energy-efficient wireless sensor networks.