Maximizing network throughput with minimal remote data transfer cost in unreliable wireless sensor networks

In this paper we consider the use of a link-unreliable wireless sensor network for remote monitoring, where the monitoring center is geographically located far away from the region of the deployed sensor network. The sensing data is transferred to the monitoring center by the third party communication service, which incurs service cost. We first formulate a novel optimization problem of maximizing the network throughput with minimal service cost, which is shown to be NP-hard. We then develop approximation algorithms. We finally evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms by simulations. Experimental results demonstrate that the solutions delivered by proposed algorithms are fractional to the optimum.