Distributed power and topology control for ir-uwb sensor networks

To extend the lifetime of wireless sensor networks a power-aware design of the communication units is required. This can be accomplished by employing power-controllable impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) transceivers. In this paper, two distributed power control algorithms are suggested that are based on a variation of IR-UWB specific parameters. The iterative algorithms converge to the optimal transmit power levels for all nodes of a given network topology. The global transmission power can be further reduced by the construction of a network hierarchy. For this purpose a topology control algorithm is proposed that can be combined with the power control procedures. This combination realises an efficient application specific multiple access scheme for IR-UWB sensor networks.