Energy saving is an important issue in wireless sensor networks for majority of sensor nodes equipped with non-rechargeable batteries. To prolong the lifetime of sensor nodes, most research works have focused on how to tune the duty cycling schemes among nodes to save the communication cost using multifarious wake-up strategies. To this aim, we propose a novel design strategy for mitigating the average power consumption of sensor node using the Min(N,T) policy M/G/1 queuing theory. The basic point of our approach is that Min(N,T) dyadic policy would mitigate the total average times of medium contention by having both a counter (N) and a timer (T) for the control of triggering on a radio server to transmit queued packets, and then the power consumption of communication can be alleviated. A comprehensive mathematical analysis on the optimal control parameters had been made. Much data analysis and simulations had been conducted to validate the proposed model. In this article, we show how the improvement level on power consumption can be achieved through analytical and simulation results. With little or no extra management cost, the proposed add-on power-saving technique can provide a design strategy to optimize relevant system parameters including power consumption and latency delay. Copyright ? 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
