An efficient method to minimize TDMA frame length in wireless sensor networks

We address the problem of minimizing TDMA frame length in a wireless sensor network charged with monitoring a given set of targets. The problem reduces to finding a minimal set of so-called configurations that delivers data from the targets to a specially designated sink node, where each configuration is a set of links that can transmit concurrently without significant interference. We assume a SINR-based interference model. We use a column generation technique to derive near-optimal solutions even when integrality constraints are enforced on coverage and flow variables. We also introduce a heuristic and a hybrid algorithm to efficiently solve the problem by leveraging a wide range of network parameters related to transmission power control, data rates, and routing. Our results show that significant gains in scalability can be obtained by using our methods.