Topology optimization for a trade off between energy cost and network lifetime in average consensus

Consensus algorithms are simple processes that involve repeated communications between the nodes of the network until a consensus is reached with certain accuracy. In this setting, the lifetime of the network and the total required energy not only depend on the number of iterations needed to achieve consensus, but also on the power consumption per node and iteration. In this work, we propose a method to optimize the network topology in order to reduce the total energy required to achieve consensus while increasing the network lifetime. Our solution is based on an optimization technique that performs a tradeoff between these two concepts. Simulation results, under different types of networks, are presented to show clearly the efficiency and validity of our approach.