Power-aware distributed protocol for a connectivity problem in wireless sensor networks

We consider the problem of assigning transmission powers to the nodes of a wireless network in such a way that all the nodes are connected by bidirectional links and the total power consumption is minimized. We present a distributed protocol, obtained by extending a connectivity protocol recently appeared in the literature. The new extended protocol is obtained by using in a local, distributed fashion, well-known centralized techniques for power minimization. The result is a self-organization framework where a set of rules, implemented locally at each node, guarantees global properties, i.e. connectivity and power expenditure minimization. Preliminary computational results are finally presented. They show that the new extended protocol guarantees a substantial saving in the total transmission power.