Design and experimental testing of an optimization-based flow control algorithm for Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper a distributed flow control law is proposed to maximize throughput and to minimize energy consumption in Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs). We preliminary recast the control problem in terms of primal–dual optimization one taking into account the bandwidth and energy autonomy node constraint. Then, we devise a distributed flow rate control implemented at each node that allows the overall network to converge to the optimal solution of the original problem. The closed loop EH-WSN stability and convergence to the optimal equilibrium are proven. The effectiveness of the proposed control law in terms of throughput and network lifetime performance is experimentally validated by a small representative EH-WSN. The experimental results are in a good agreement with the theoretical ones.