Abstract—A critical issue in wireless sensor networks is the limited availability of power and hence optimizing power is very important. In any sensor node, most of the power is consumed during packet transmission. We propose a new scheme to reduce the power consumption of nodes in a sensor network during packet transmission based on queue threshold. We develop an analytical model of a sensor node and analyze the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of performance parameters such as average power consumption and mean delay. We also derive the expression for the optimal value of threshold. Results show that the average power consumption of a node reduces by 68% for the optimal threshold value when compared to no threshold condition by considering mean arrival rate per node of 2 and there exists trade-off between the average power consumption and mean delay. We perform simulations and the results obtained show that the analytical results match with the simulation results thus validating the analytical model.

Index Terms—Average power consumption, mean delay, queue threshold, wireless sensor network.

R. Maheswar is with VLB Janakiammal College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, India (phone: 91-422-2604567; fax: 91-422-2607152; e-mail: maheshh3@rediffmail.com).
R. Jayaparvathy is with Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore,India (e-mail: jaya_parvathy@yahoo.com).

Cite: R. Maheswar and R. Jayaparvathy, "Optimal Power Control Technique for a Wireless Sensor Node: A New Approach," International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 37-41, 2011.