Reliability assessment of wireless sensor nodes with non-linear battery discharge

Wireless sensor networks are constituted of a large number of tiny sensor nodes randomly distributed over a geographical region. In order to reduce power consumption, nodes undergo cycles of active-sleep periods that reduce their ability to send/receive data. Aim of this paper is to analyze the reliability of a battery-powered sensor node with active-sleep cycles considering both linear and non linear discharge processes. The approach used in the evaluation is based on continuous phase type distributions and Kronecker algebra. The technique is thus applied to the evaluation of an example in order to demonstrate its effectiveness. The obtained results strongly encourage future work, figuring out possible application in wider network context with complex topology, redundant nodes, and unreliable links, due to the Kronecher algebra capabilities to manage the state space explosion problem. © 2010 IEEE.