Optimal data transmission and battery charging policies for solar powered sensor networks using Markov decision process

An optimal data transmission and battery charging policy for sensor networks, with solar powered nodes, is proposed. A sensor node with multiple battery charging levels and solar radiation states is considered. To model the sensor node behavior we employ constrained Markov decision process, which achieves an optimal stochastic policy, allowing sensor node to prolong its battery lifetime with minimum data transmission rate constraint. The Markov decision process based model is evaluated using reported energy measurements for the existing platforms. The performance evaluation results reveal, how the data transmission rate should be controlled for different data arrival rates, while taking into account the current battery state and the solar radiation pattern. The proposed model is flexible and can accommodate different number of charging/discharging levels as well as radiation patterns.