Utility-based asynchronous flow control algorithm for wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we formulate a flow control optimization problem for wireless sensor networks with lifetime constraint and link interference in an asynchronous setting. Our formulation is based on the network utility maximization framework, in which a general utility function is used to characterize the network performance such as throughput. To solve the problem, we propose a fully asynchronous distributed algorithm based on dual decomposition, and theoretically prove its convergence. The proposed algorithm can achieve the maximum utility. Extensive simulations are conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of our algorithm and validate the analytical results.