Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost, WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process (MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs

Fast design space exploration of vibration-based energy harvesting wireless sensors

An energy-harvester-powered wireless sensor node is a complicated system with many design parameters. To investigate the various trade-offs among these parameters, it is desirable to explore the multi-dimensional design space quickly. However, due to the large number of parameters and costly simulation CPU times, it is often difficult or even impossible to explore the design space via simulation. This paper presents a response surface model (RSM) based technique for fast design space exploration of a complete wireless sensor node powered by a tunable energy harvester. As a proof of concept, a software toolkit has been developed which implements the proposed design flow and incorporates either real data or parametrized models of the vibration source, the energy harvester, tuning controller and wireless sensor node. Several test scenarios are considered, which illustrate how the proposed approach permits the designer to adjust a wide range of system parameters and evaluate the effect almost instantly but still with high accuracy. In the developed toolkit, the estimated CPU time of one RSM estimation is 25s and the average RSM estimation error is less than 16.5

Network-aware design-space exploration of a power-efficient embedded application

The paper presents the design and multi-parameter optimization of a networked embedded application for the health-care domain. Several hardware, software, and application parameters, such as clock frequency, sensor sampling rate, data packet rate, are tuned at design- and run-time according to application specifications and operating conditions to optimize hardware requirements, packet loss, power consumption. Experimental results show that further power efficiency can be achieved by considering also communication aspects during design space exploratio

Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks - OMCO NET

The mini conference “Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks” focuses on advanced methods for search and optimisation applied to wireless communication networks. It is sponsored by Research & Enterprise Fund Southampton Solent University. The conference strives to widen knowledge on advanced search methods capable of optimisation of wireless communications networks. The aim is to provide a forum for exchange of recent knowledge, new ideas and trends in this progressive and challenging area. The conference will popularise new successful approaches on resolving hard tasks such as minimisation of transmit power, cooperative and optimal routing