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ZTE Communications ›› 2015, Vol. 13 ›› Issue (1): 35-42.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-5188.2015.01.005

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An Optimal Lifetime Utility Routing for 5G and Energy-Harvesting Wireless Networks

Gina Martinez1, Shufang Li2, and Chi Zhou1   

  1. 1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, IL 60616, USA;
    2. Telecommunication Engineering Institute, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication, Beijing 100876, China
  • Received:2014-07-15 Online:2015-03-25 Published:2015-03-25
  • About author:Gina Martinez (gmartine@iit.edu) received her BS degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005. She received her MS in Computer Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2009. She is currently a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, IIT. Her research interests include wireless sensor networks (WSN), green communications, WSN routing, energy-harvesting and resource management in WSNs. She is an IEEE student member.
    Shufang Li (lisf@bupt.edu.cn) received her PhD degree in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, China, in 1997. She is professor and PhD adviser in School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Communications (BUPT). She is also the director of the Joint Lab of BUPT and State Radio Monitoring Center (SRMC), China. Her primary research interests include EMI/EMC, simulation and optimization for radiation interference on high speed digital circuit, simulation on electro-magnetic environment and countermeasure for interference control, simulation on SAR specific absorption rate) for electromagnetic radiation of cellular phones, and testing technology on EMC, and the theory and design of radio frequency circuits in wireless communication. Professor Li has been a senior member of the IEEE since 2009.
    Chi Zhou (zhou@iit.edu) received double degrees in both automation and business administration from Tsinghua University, China, in 1997. She received her MS and PhD degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Northwestern University, USA, in 2000 and 2002. Since 2006, she has been working in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, and is currently an associate professor there. Her primary research interests include wireless sensor networks, scheduling for OFMA/MIMO systems, network coding for wireless mesh networks, and integration of optical and wireless networks. She is a senior member of the IEEE.

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Abstract: Harvesting energy from environmental sources such as solar and wind can mitigate or solve the limited-energy problem in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we propose an energy-harvest-aware route-selection method that incorporates harvest availability properties and energy storage capacity limits into the routing decisions. The harvest-aware routing problem is formulated as a linear program with a utility-based objective function that balances the two conflicting routing objectives of maximum total and maximum minimum residual network energy. The simulation results show that doing so achieves a longer network lifetime, defined as the time-to-first-node-death in the network. Additionally, most existing energy-harvesting routing algorithms route each traffic flow independently from each other. The LP formulation allows for a joint optimization of multiple traffic flows. Better residual energy statistics are also achieved by such joint consideration compared to independent optimization of each commodity.

Key words: routing, 5G, energy-harvesting, wireless sensor networks