An Efficient Task Scheduling Method for Improved Network Delay in Distributed Sensor Networks

One of the challenge in developing smart sensor networks is the minimization of network delay or at the very least be able to have upper and lower boundaries of network delay when sensor nodes respond to higher level applications. In this paper, we present a highly efficient task scheduling method based on linear programming that integrates both sensing and networking communication delay. The objective is to minimize the total response time and global power consumption of the network with respect to the total number of sensor nodes in the network. Simulation results based on closed-form solutions for the task scheduling problem are presented for two scenarios with homogeneous and six scenarios with heterogeneous sensor nodes using single level tree-network topology. Specifically, for the heterogeneous scenarios, responding sequence that results in global optimum total respond time has also been found.