TDMA scheduling with maximum throughput and fair rate allocation in wireless sensor networks

This paper proposes a new network-wide optimized time division multiple access (TDMA) scheduling scheme for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). It can simultaneously achieve maximum throughput and fair rate allocation given the requirement of network lifetime. To achieve this object, we first formulate the rate allocation problem based on the Lexicographic Max-Min (LMM) criterion, which takes fairness, throughput maximization, and slot reuse into consideration. Then, we develop a polynomial-time algorithm by exploiting iterative linear program (LP) to solve the LMM optimization. Based on the optimal rate allocation vector and relay scheme derived from the optimization model, we present a TDMA scheduling algorithm to achieve a minimum TDMA frame length through slot reuse. We jointly interconnect the LMM rate allocation and TDMA scheduling algorithm with a slot reuse control parameter, and propose a procedure to iteratively calculate a proper value for this parameter. Numerical results show that our proposed TDMA schedule improves the fairness and throughput significantly.