Wendi Heinzelman Bhaskar

This paper considers the dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) when all the nodes are required to be functional for the network to be considered functional. In such cases, the network needs to maintain an energy balance among the nodes to ensure simultaneous death of the nodes. Adaptive communication techniques employing different versions of the water-filling algorithm have widely been used to maximize ergodic capacity [1], [2]. However, maximizing ergodic capacity, in these cases, could lead to a shorter network lifetime. In this paper we present a bandwidth allocation scheme that enables us to trade-off ergodic capacity for a balance in the battery levels of the nodes to extend the network lifetime. Our approach is a convex combination of dynamic and fixed bandwidth allocation schemes where the battery levels of the nodes are controlled by varying the boundary between the two schemes. Simulations using data from a star network prototype implementation are used to evaluate the performance of our bandwidth allocation algorithms.