This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2016.2627478, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
Decentralized control algorithm for fast monitoring
and efficient energy consumption in energy
harvesting wireless sensor networks
Sabato Manfredi∗† , Member, IEEE, Edmondo Di Tucci∗
∗ Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
† Control and Power Group, Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Imperial College, London
Email: sabato.manfredi, edmondo.ditucci@unina.it
Abstract—The paper proposes a fully decentralized algorithm
to control nodes transmission radii for simultaneously coping
with energy-type requirement (e.g. network power consumption)
and application-type requirement (e.g. fast monitoring and esti-
mation of variables of interest). The stability of the closed loop
network under the proposed control law is proved. Simulation
validations show the effectiveness of the proposed approach in
nominal scenario as well as in the presence of uncertain power
requirements and harvesting system supply, outperforming a well
known related approach existing in the literature.
Index Terms—Wireless Sensor Networks, Consensus Algo-
rithms, Optimization of Industrial Wireless Networks, Energy
Efficiency, Energy Harvesting.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE recent development of low cost smart sensors and
micro-controllers supporting network connectivity ([1])
is facilitating the implementation of distributed monitoring and
control algorithms in many applications (i.e. military, agricul-
ture, environment monitoring, home automation, automotive,
industrial applications) by architectures based on WSN ([2]).
Indeed wireless data communication networks present reduced
costs, better power management, ease in maintenance and ef-
fortless deployment in remote and hard-to-reach areas. Energy
Harvesting Wireless Sensor Network (EH-WSN) architecture
is composed of sensor nodes supplied by harvesting systems
([3]) that manage the energy provided by the battery and/or
renewable source (e.g. RF energy, vibrations, thermal energy)
in order to extend the network autonomy ([5], [7]). Different
approaches have been proposed to specifically improve the
energy performance of EH-WSN by power control (see e.g.
[8] and references therein). EH-WSNs support applications
in different emerging monitoring and control fields such as
building thermal monitoring, bridge structural health monitor-
ing, earthquake forecast, surveillance, wireless robot systems
([2], [9]). A well known distributed protocol aimed to estimate
the average of monitored signals (e.g. spatial environmental
temperature) is the consensus algorithm suitable for linear
and nonlinear estimations ([4], [6], [10]). An important design
requirement is the responsiveness of the above estimation
algorithm for fast monitoring purpose. It is well known that
Copyright
2009
c IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. How-
ever, permission to use this material for any other purposes must be obtained
from the IEEE by sending a request to pubs-permissions@ieee.org
1551-3203 (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
the algebraic connectivity of the network graph affects the
convergence rate of the consensus algorithm. Therefore in a
wireless networked communication system the convergence
rate can be improved by increasing the node’s communication
radii (i.e. the network connectivity). This however causes the
increase of the energy consumption and thus the reduction of
the EH-WSN lifetime ([11]). Although energy consumption
and algorithm responsiveness are in tradeoff, the most part
of the existing literature focuses on network autonomy maxi-
mization or on convergence rate minimization separately.
Specifically, in ([12]) it is proposed an online adaptive
energy efficient algorithm where each node autonomously
adjusts its transmission radius on the base of residual power.
Differently, in ([13]) the authors introduce a topology main-
tenance algorithm that dynamically controls the transmission
radii to extend the lifetime of the network while preserving
the coverage of the monitored area. In these works the
convergence rate of the distributed algorithm has not been
taken into account. Differently, other works achieve network
connectivity regulation by controlling the transmission radius
in order to satisfy consensus algorithm requirements (e.g.
convergence rate). In [14] authors present the estimation and
control of graph connectivity in a decentralized manner. In
[15], [16] authors implement a decentralized control strategy
that adaptively steers the transmission radii in order to en-
sure network connectivity maintenance. In the above works,
the network connectivity is estimated and controlled, while
network lifetime requirement is neglected.
In this paper we formulate a decentralized control law
of node transmission radius in order to simultaneously a)
minimize the network energy consumption and b) maximize
the network connectivity. The former aim a) allows to extend
the lifetime of the overall EH-WSN system, while the latter
aim b) increases the responsiveness of the monitoring/control
consensus algorithm.
Only few works investigate the optimal choice of transmis-
sion radii by exploiting the existing tradeoff between network
lifetime and graph connectivity. Specifically, in Sardellitti et
al. ([17]) it is proposed an offline centralized method that
evaluates the node transmission range in order to optimize both
energy and connectivity performance. The proposed solution
considers all radii being equal and the optimal solution is
evaluated independently on the actual available node energy.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2016.2627478, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
A similar framework is considered in [18] where radii may
be different and are steered in a centralized way in order to
optimize both energy and consensus algorithm performance.
It is worth of note that an interesting and effective online de-
centralized algorithm version, namely Decentralized Heuristic
Algorithm (DHA in the following) is presented in [19]. Herein,
we propose a fully Distributed Energy-based Radii Control
algorithm (DERC in the following) to simultaneously optimize
both energy and consensus performance thus encompassing
all offline centralized approaches presented in the literature.
Hence the proposed approach is similar to the framework
proposed in [19] optimizing the same objective function to
cope with aims a) and b) with the following notable differ-
ences. Firstly, the method allows each node distributively to
implement a descend gradient algorithm in order to find the
optimal value of the transmission radii that minimizes the
objective function. Each node tunes its transmission radius
on the base of both the above descend algorithm result
and the node available energy. This strongly improves the
network lifetime because the actual node available energy is
explicitly taken into account in the radii controller. Secondly
the above feature allows to get high performance on system
autonomy mainly in the presence of the energy harvesting,
that is a feature not considered by the other approaches in
literature. Additionally a closed-loop network stability analysis
is analytically carried out. Finally, our formulation is suitable
also for asymmetric direct WSN network graph.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II the problem
statement is presented. In Section III the proposed distributed
control law, the closed loop network stability analysis and
the implementation features are detailed. In Section IV an
experimental simulation validation of the proposed approach
under different scenarios is carried out. Conclusions are given
in Section V.
Notation: In this manuscript x = [xi ] indicates a vector of
scalars xi , the capital X = [xij ] denotes the matrix of elements
xij and (·)T is the transpose of its argument. 1 indicates a
vector of all ones. Let X be a real square matrix, the symbol
vi denotes the i-th eigenvector of X and λi the corresponding
eigenvalue. xre and xim denote respectively the real and the
imaginary part of the complex variable x = xre + ixim , where
symbol i is the imaginary unit. |x| denotes the absolute value
of x, N and R the sets of natural and real numbers. Moreover,
the following notations are defined: ||x||1 = x1 +x2 +···+x n
n
; denote with P Rj the lower threshold level of power at the
2 2 2
x +x +···+x
p
2 2 2 2
||x ||1 = 1 2
n
n
; ||x||2 = x1 + x2 + · · · + xn ; x
e receiver node j below of which it is impossible to distinguish
denotes an estimation of the variable x.
II. P ROBLEM S TATEMENT
A WSN centralized system scheme is based on the wireless
infrastructure to retrieve information from the environment and
to communicate the control decision to actuators, while the
elaboration of a specific decision is taken by a central control
system (fusion center). Although this scheme has been exten-
sively used in the past, it suffers from low reliability and high
latency. Differently, in a WSN decentralized system scheme,
each node has to cooperate with the neighbouring nodes in
order to evaluate in a decentralized way the elaboration carried
out by the fusion center in the case of WSN centralized system.
1551-3203 (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
2
The main advantages in a WSN decentralized scheme are
high reliability and network responsiveness and this will be
the architecture considered in the paper.
Specifically each network node implements a decentralized
cooperative estimator (e.g. consensus algorithm) in order to
distributively extract a global information (or take a global
decision) on the base of local measurements and radio-
acquired data from its neighbours. We also assume that nodes
are supplied by batteries and can eventually be supported by
renewable energy sources.
A. EH-WSN model
A EH-WSN composed of n sensors may be modelled
by a graph G with adjacency matrix A ∈ Rn×n , whose
elements aij are assumed to be equal to 1 if a source node
i is in communication with node j, and 0 otherwise. Let
pi = [pix , piy ] the coordinates of node i in a Cartesian
reference system, rij = ||pi − pj ||2 the euclidean distance
between nodes i and j, ρi the i-th transmission radius, aij
can be formulated as follows: aij = 1 if ρi ≥ rij and 0
otherwise.
A direct graph G is connected if there exists at least one
path for any source-destination couple of nodes. The graph
is balanced if it is connected and the number of input links
equals the number of output links at each node. The network
graph is symmetric if aij = aji for all (i, j). The
P Laplacian
L = [lij ] is the matrix with element lij = aik if i =
k6=i
j; lij = −aij if i 6= j.
For connected graph the Laplacian matrix L has one eigen-
value equal to zero and the others n − 1 non null, namely
0 = |λ1 | ≤ |λ2 | ≤ ... ≤ |λn |. The second smallest no-zero
eigenvalue λ2 is referred as the algebraic connectivity ([14],
[16]) because is related to the connectivity property of the
graph.
In WSN, the algebraic connectivity of the graph can be
tuned by controlling the communication radii of nodes. The
relation between the transmission power and the covered
distance derives from the well known path loss formula ([20]).
Let PTi (ρi ) the amount of power consumed by the trans-
mitter node i and PT (ρi ) the signal power at distance ρi , it
 β
results PTi (ρi ) = PT (ρi ) · rρ0i where β > 0 is the channel
power loss coefficient and r0 is a normalization factor. We
between noise and signal. P Rj is assumed to be known or
estimated as it depends on the specific adopted transmission
coding and the signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver. In order to
establish a communication between nodes i and j at distance
rij , two conditions have to hold: 1) the transmission radius of
i has to be at least equal to the distance between nodes i and
j, namely ρi ≥ rij and 2) the signal received by node j has
to be detectable, namely PT (rij ) ≥ P Rj . Herein, we consider
node i connected to node j at distance rij (i.e. aij = 1) if
 ρ β
i
PTi (ρi ) ≥ P Rj · (1)
r0
with ρi ≥ rij .
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2016.2627478, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
It is well known ([21]) that with the modern technology, the
average power consumption due to the transmission of data is
always one or two orders of magnitude greater than wireless
reception and computation contributes. Therefore in this paper,
it is assumed that the power consumed by node during time is
only due to the power transmission PTi (ρi ), while any other
contribution is neglected. Anyway, in the simulation section,
we will validate the performance of the proposed algorithm
also in the presence of uncertain power requirements. Modern
wireless transmitter allows to vary the transmission radius,
therefore herein we consider ρi = ρi (t). Moreover in the
following we omit the explicit dependence on time t when
this does not make any ambiguity.
The dynamic of battery Penergy ξi (t)
may be modelled by

ξ˙i (t) = −PTi (ρi (t)) + Ns δ t − ts where Ns δ t − ts
s∈Ni
represents the Dirac function with amplitude Ns and centered
at the time instant ts ∈ R and Ni ⊆ N modelling the effect of

charging and discharging phenomena. Specifically, Ns δ t−ts
is the net equivalent energy charged or spent by the node in
a time interval (ts−1 , ts ] respectively due to harvesting (i.e.
Ns > 0) and power requirement event (i.e. Ns < 0).
In the following we model the dynamic of ξi (t) in
the
presence of a recharge or discharge event Ns δ t − ts by
ξ˙i (t) = −PTi (ρi (t)) with initial state condition at time instant
ts equivalent to ξi (ts ) = ξi (ts−1 ) + Ns .
B. Consensus algorithms
The term consensus protocol denotes an algorithm distribu-
tively implemented among the agents that allows each agent’s
state estimation x ei to evolve to a global common value x
(named the consensus value). The dynamic consensus law is:
X network lifetime TL is defined as the shortest node lifetime
e˙ i (t) = −α
x xi (t) − x
aij (e ej (t)) + ẋi (t) (2)
j consensus algorithm convergence is the connectivity of the
where α is a gain factor, x ei is an estimation of a consensus
value x̄ = g(x), with g is a function of a vector of measures
of interest x = [xi ]. Algorithm (2) can be recast in compact
form as x e˙ (t) = −αLe x(t) + ẋ(t) where L is the Laplacian
matrix. This algorithm refers to 1-hop dynamic consensus
algorithm, according to the idea that the node updates the
local state variable just on the base of information of its 1-hop
neighbours. Notice that the stability analysis of the algorithm
(2) may be recast in terms of stability analysis of the following
agreement error system around the zero equilibrium point:
3
temperature monitoring) where each node needs to estimate in
a distributed way the average value of the measures of interest
(e.g. average temperature) carried out by the network nodes
ei (t) is the estimation of x = ||x||1 ). In this case each
(i.e. x
node implements a dynamic average consensus algorithm. As
stated above, a necessary assumption for which the agreement
value x is the estimation of the average of the measured
values x is that the graph is balanced or symmetric [22]. The
latter assumptions are actually restrictive from the practical
point of view, mainly in the considered framework where the
network graph is time varying due to the variation of the
node radii. Therefore in the following we make a weaker
assumption of connected digraph (i.e. the graph can be direct,
asymmetric and unbalanced). Additionally we are interested
in the estimation of the average value of input signals (i.e.
x = ||x||1 ), in the implementation of the proposed distributed
control algorithm we leverage on a decentralized balancing
procedure proposed in [16]. Hence we make the following
assumption:
Assumption 1. The network graph is connected.
C. Performance indexes and objective function of the EH-
WSN
Recently the analysis of the energy consumption perfor-
mance has received particular attention in the design of EH-
WSN. Indeed, the bad management of supply resource can
affect both the network lifetime and reliability. Any battery
is characterized by a threshold ξT H so that the battery is
able to supply the node if ξi > ξT H . The node lifetime Tli
can then be defined as the time instant at which the battery
exhausts its energy, namely Tli : ξi (Tli ) ≤ ξT H . The
TL = mini=1,...,n Tli [11]. As a necessary condition for
network graph, a further performance of interest is the time at
which the network becomes disconnected. Due to the impor-
tance of this event, herein with the term network disconnection
time performance TD we refer to the time at which the
network becomes disconnected. Let PT (ρ) = [PTi (ρi )] be the
nodes transmission power, a reduction in the average power
consumption ||PT (ρ)||1 yields to an increase of the network
lifetime TL . As a consequence, TL is affected by ρ as it results
TL ∝ ||PT 1(ρ)||1 .
Let TC the convergence time of the consensus algorithm,
it is defined as the time spent by each node estimation x
ei to
e˙ (t) = −αLe
e(t) (3)

 xei (TC )−x 
e
where e e = x e − x̄1 is the the agreement error (refer to [4],
[22] for further details). The connectivity of the network graph
is a necessary condition to assess the convergence of the
estimation xi to an agreement value x (i.e. eei (t) to 0 for all i).
Additionally, the time needed by the estimation x ei to converge
to x (i.e. the convergence time) depends on the λ2re . Therefore,
an increase of λ2re reduces the time spent by node i-th to get an
estimation of x. Finally, for balanced or symmetric connected
graph λ2 = λ2re and the agreement value x is the average
value of the input signals xi ([22]), namely x = g(x) = ||x||1 .
Herein we are interested in control engineering scenario (e.g.
1551-3203 (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
converge to a value x, TC : maxi   ≤ 0.05. It is
x
well known that TC decreases for the increasing of algebraic
connectivity ([4], [22]). It is also clear that the increment of
the transmission radii ρ can yield to the increasing of the
algebraic connectivity of the network. Consequently, ρ can be
also used to affect TC because it results that TC ∝ λ2re1(ρ) .
In conclusion ρ may be designed to tradeoff TC and TL .
An unified objective function that takes into account both TC
and TL can be defined as J(ρ) = ||Pλ2re T (ρ)||1 TC
(ρ) ∝ TL .
The aim is to find the vector ρ that minimizes J in
order to achieve the minimum consensus convergence time
at the maximum network lifetime. It is well known ([17],
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2016.2627478, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
4

0.025 where ρ = [ρi (ρ)] ∀i. Due to the type of dependence of the
objective function J on ||PT (ρ)||1 and λ2re (ρ) detailed in
Section II-C, it results that J(ρ) is a convex function of ρ
0.02
assuming maximum value for lowest and highest ρ values.
Indeed small values cause the network to be disconnected and
0.015 high values increase network consumption. The steepest de-
J (ρ)

scent method is suitable to solve this kind of convex problem.

Indeed any initial value of ρi can dynamically approach to the
0.01
optimal ρ∗ according to the following equation:



0.005
ρ̇ = −γ∇J ρ(ρ) = −γ∇J ρ (5)

In (5), ∇ is the gradient operator, γ is a gain factor and

0 ρ = [ρi (ρ)]. ∇ operates on the function J, while the elements
0 10 20 30 40 50 of the vector ρ are given by equation (4).
ρ̄
Fig. 1. Objective function J(ρ) for ρ = [ρi ] with ρi = ρ ∀i. The function
has a minimum for ρ = 25. A. Closed-loop network stability analysis
From the energy node model and consensus algorithm
equation (3) and taking into account the control law (4), the
[19]) that the objective function for the considered scenario closed loop network model is:
has a minimum value. For instance, assuming a vector of
uniform transmission radii ρ = [ρi ] with ρi = ρ ∀i, the ξ˙i = −PTi (ρi ) (6a)
objective function J(ρ) is shown in Fig. 1 with a minimum e˙ = −αLee (6b)
at ρ = ρ∗ ' 25.
e
Indeed, starting from the minimum value of ρ assuring ρ̇i (ρ) = Ėi ρ + Ei ρ̇ = Ėi ρ − Ei γ∇J(ρ) (6c)
network connectivity, an increase of ρ strongly increases the e = [e
with e ei ] for i = 1, . . . , n.
network connectivity and this implies a decreasing of J(ρ) as h iT
shown in Fig. 1 for ρ ∈ [7, 25]. Further increasing of ρ implies Defined the vector of state variable z = ξ T e eT ρT with
an increasing of J(ρ) due to the high increase of ||PT (ρ)||1 ξ = [ξi ], ρ = [ρi ], the closed loop network equilibrium point
h T iT
(Fig. 1 for ρ ∈ [25, 50]). is ẑ = ξ̂ 0T ρ̂T where 0 is a zero vector, ξ̂ = [ξˆi ], ξˆi =
 µ
Assumption 2. The function J(ρ) is a differentiable function −ξ ∗
ξT H , ρ̂ = [ρ̂i ], ρ̂i = Êi ρ∗ , Êi = Ei (ξT H ) = ξξTMH−ξ ∗ + 1 .
with a minimum ρ∗ . i
We state the following result:

III. A FULLY DISTRIBUTED CONTROL LAW FORMULATION Theorem 1. If Assumptions 1 and 2 hold then the equilibrium
point ẑ of the closed-loop network (6) is asymptotically stable
The condition of uniform radii ρi = ρ ∀i represents a
and the state z asymptotically converges to ẑ.
suboptimal solution from the energy consumption point of
view. Indeed, nodes with lower energy availability spend the Proof. Let’s consider the candidate Lyapunov function:
same power of nodes with higher battery energy, thus reducing 1 X ˆ 2 + 1e

the overall network lifetime. V (z) = (ρi − Ei ρ∗ )2 + (ξi − ξ) eT e
e
2 i 2
The lifetime of the network can be significantly extended
if nodes with high and low energy availability respectively Notice that V (z) > 0 ∀z 6= ẑ and V (ẑ) = 0. Additionally it
increase and decrease their transmission radii. Let ρ the results:
reference radius for all nodes, the idea is to tune the radius ρi X X
at the node i-th proportionally to ξi . Namely, we consider at V̇ (z) = (ρi − Ei ρ∗ )ρ̇i − (ρi − Ei ρ∗ )ρ∗ Ėi
the node i the following control law: i i
T ˙
X X
µ + ˙
(ξi − ξT H )ξi + e
e ee= (ρ − ρ∗ )Ei ρ̇i
ξi (t) − ξ ∗

ρi (ρ) = + 1 ρ = Ei ρ (4) i
X i
ξMi − ξ ∗
e˙
X
− (ρ − ρ∗ )ρ∗ Ei Ėi + (ξi − ξT H )ξ˙i + e
eT e
where ξMi is the node maximum energy, ξ ∗ and µ are i
∗ Xi
controller parameters to be tuned such that ξξiM(t)−ξ−ξ ∗ + 1 >0 = −γ(ρ − ρ )∇J(ρ) ∗
Ei2 (7a)
i
for all t > 0. The latter condition may be fulfilled for instance i
if ξ ∗ < mini (ξMi + ξT H )/2. X
+ (ρ − ρ∗ )2 Ei Ėi (7b)
In this way, nodes with higher residual energy concur to in-
i
crease network connectivity and so improving the convergence X
time TC : this balances the reduction of TC due to those nodes − (ξi − ξT H )PTi (ρi ) (7c)
i
with lower residual energy. The reference radius ρ in (4) is T
the solution of the optimization problem ρ∗ = arg min ρ J(ρ) −e
e Le
e (7d)

1551-3203 (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2016.2627478, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
In the following we will analyse the terms (7a)-(7d) com-
posing PV̇ (z), ∀z 6= ẑ. The term (7a) is negative definite being
γ > 0, i Ei2 > 0 and taking into account Assumption 2. The
term (7b) is negative definite as well because Ei Ėi < 0 for
all i and (ρ − ρ∗ )2 > 0. The term (7c) is negative definite
being ξi > ξT H for all i and PTi (ρi ) > 0. To show the
definite negativity of the term (7d) we need to recall an
extension of algebraic connectivity to the case of directed
graph G with non symmetric and unbalanced Laplacian matrix
L. Specifically, in [23] it was assessed a refinement of the
the algebraic connectivity ã(G) which preserves non-negativity
T
for directed graph, namely ã(G) = min||v||2 =1,v⊥1 v||v|| HLv
2
2
with v generic space vector, H = diag(h), and h = [hi ]
being the unique positive vector such that hT L = 0 and
maxi hi = 1. Therein it was proved that if the network
graph is connected then ã(G) > 0. Therefore from the
definition ofPnLaplacian matrix L and ã(G), we may infer
eT Le
e e = 12 i,j lij ||eej − eei ||22 ≥ e
eT HLe e||22 . From
e ≥ ã(G)||e
Assumption 1 the graph is connected then ã(G) > 0 ([23])
and it follows −e eT Le e < 0. Therefore V̇ (z) < 0 ∀z 6= ẑ and
the result follows.
B. A cooperative control law implementation
In this section, we present a distributed implementation
of the proposed control law (4). Specifically, each node can
locally regulate the transmission radius ρi according to (4)
provided it evaluates ρ̄. In this respect the following discrete
version of the gradient-based equation (5) may be used:
−γ
ρ(k+1) − ρ(k) = · that guarantees network connectivity. For instance a procedure
ρ(k) − ρ(k−1)
! (8)
||PT (ρ(k))||1 ||PT (ρ(k−1))||1
·
−

λ2re ρ(k) λ2re ρ(k−1)
where for the sake of notation ρ(k) represents the value of ρ at
the time step k, ρ(k) = [ρi (ρ(k))] is the vector of transmission
radii ρi at time step k and it has been assumed unitary the
duration of time interval between two steps k and k + 1.
Equation (8) can be implemented in a distributed way if
each node
can locally estimate the terms ||PT (ρ(k))||1 and
λ2re ρ(k) . A distributed estimation of the two above terms
can be assessed by using average consensus algorithms-type
(2). In this respect, in following we will firstly present how to
implement average consensus algorithms (2) under a weaker
assumption of directed connect network (in place of the
stronger one of balanced or symmetric graph). Secondly we
will recall an average

consensus-based algorithm to distribute
estimate λ2re ρ(k) . Finally we will illustrate step by step a
fully distributed implementation of the proposed control lever-
aging on the presented average consensus-based algorithms.
B.1 Average consensus in connected directed networks
As stated in Subsection II-B, the distributed consensus algo-
rithm (2) allows each node to evaluate an estimation x ei (t)
of the average value x = ||x||1 provided the network graph
is balanced or symmetric. Herein, we would like to still
guarantee convergence of algorithm (2) to the average value
x = ||x||1 under the weaker Assumption 1 of direct connected
digraph by using the procedure in ([16]). The main idea of
1551-3203 (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
5
the authors in ([16]) is to compute a diagonal balancing
gain matrix W = diag{[w1 , . . . , wn ]} such that the matrix
LB = WL is a balanced Laplacian version of L with both
rows and columns zero sum. They formulate a distributed
algorithm to evaluate at each node i-th the gain wi by using
auxiliary variables ψij according to the following algorithm:
X
ψij (k + 1) = ψij (k) − η aih (ψij (k) − ψhj (k)) , ∀j 6= i
h
1 X
ψii (k) = lji ψij (k) (9)
lii
j6=i
with η is a design parameter affecting the algorithm respon-
siveness. At steady state the gain at the node i-th can be
evaluated as wi = ψii ∀i. We used the above procedure
allowing each node to compute gain wi and use it in the
average consensus algorithm (2) to correctly estimate the
average value. Specifically the following discrete version is
implemented:
n
x ei (k) − αwi
ei (k + 1) = x
X
xi (k) − x
aij (e ej (k))
j=1
+ (xi (k + 1) − xi (k)) (10)
Therefore algorithms (9) and (10) allow each node to take
local actions to work on a balanced version LB of Laplacian
matrix L still guaranteeing the convergence of node estimation
ei (t) to the average value x = ||x||1 despite the assumption
x
of connected direct graph. Notice that Assumption 1 may be
fulfilled by assigning at each node a minimum radius ρimin
given in [25] may be implemented such that each node can
distributively set its minimum radius to assess the existence
of a minimum spanning tree (i.e. network connectivity).
B.2 Distribute control algorithm
Now we are ready to describe the steps to implement in a
fully distributed way the control law (4) by the Algorithm 1.
In the following k represents the time step at which the radius
control (4) is applied. Specifically, after an initialization phase,
a one-shot distributed balancing algorithm (9) is implemented
(Algorithm 1 - step 4). This operation is preliminary to
guarantee the effectiveness of the average algorithm (10) used
in the subsequent steps. In order to estimate ρ̄, equation (8)

is
used and therefore estimation ||P e T (ρ(k))||1 and λe2re ρ(k) of


respectively ||PT (ρ(k))||1 and λ2re ρ(k) have to be evaluated.
Between two control application time steps k
and k+1 each
node estimates of ||P e T (ρ(k))||1 and λe2re ρ(k) by using the
average consensus algorithm (10). Specifically we may derive
the following estimation:
||P
e T (ρ(k))||1 = ||ξ(k)−ξ(k −1)||1 = ||e ξ(k)||1 −||e
ξ(k −1)||1
(11)
where ||eξ(·)||1 is evaluated in a distributed way by using the
consensus algorithm (10) applied for x ei = ξei and xi = ξi .
In this way, each node evaluates a local estimation ξei of
||ξ||1 (Algorithm 1 - step 5), and therefore the estimation
||P
e T (ρ(k))||1 by using (11) (Algorithm 1 - step 6). Then
the distributed estimation of λ e2re (Algorithm 1 - step 7) is
implemented using the well known Power Iteration method
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2016.2627478, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
Algorithm 1 Distributed Energy-based Radii Control algo-
rithm (DERC) at node i-th
1: {Initialization steps}
2: repeat
3: k =k+1
4: wi ← balancing gains (eq.(9))
5: ||e
ξ(k)||1 ← average consensus on ξ(k) (eq.(10))
6: ||Pe T (ρ(k))||1 ← ||e ξ(k)||1 − ||e
ξ(k −

1)||1 (eq.(11))


7: λ2re ρ(k) ← Distributed λ2re ρ(k) estimation
e 35
8: ρei (k + 1) ← Steepest descent on J (eq.(8))
ρ(k + 1) = ||e
9: ρ||1 ← average µconsensus on ρ e (eq.(10))
ξi (k)−ξ ∗
10: ρi (k + 1) ← ξM −ξ∗ + 1 · ρ(k + 1) (eq.(4))
i
11: until ξi (k) ≤ ξT H
for a symmetric network ([14]) extended to the more general
case of directed graph ([16]).
As the value of candidate optimal ray ρ evaluated by (8)
(Algorithm 1 step 8) may result in a different value ρei at
each node i-th (due to numerical or noisy effect), an average
consensus algorithm is then implemented to assess at each
node an unique estimated value ρ = ||e ρi ||1 (Algorithm 1 step
9). Finally the control law (4) to regulate the radius at node
i-th is implemented by step 10 of the Algorithm 1.
IV. S IMULATION VALIDATION
In this section we present a campaign of simulations under
the M ATLAB environment to validate the proposed DERC
algorithm in different scenarios. We consider a WSN to
monitor a temperature of a field. The network is composed of
50 nodes randomly distributed onto a 100 × 100 m2 . In path
loss formula we set r0 = 0.0199 and β = 2.25 according
to the indication given in [20]. The consensus algorithms
are designed to assure convergence and stability properties
following the indications given in the original papers ([14],
[16], [22]). In order to show the effectiveness of our approach
in practical scenarios, we assume that the network performs
a distributed temperature monitoring application and uses
consensus algorithm to evaluate the average value of the
environment temperature. The temperature over the area is
assumed to be a random variable uniformly distributed in the
range [17, 27] ◦ C and is sampled with a rate of 0.01 Hz.
Herein we will show the performance of the proposed
DERC algorithm compared than ones obtained under a static
network radii design and DHA algorithm proposed in [19].
The objective function value and the following performance
indexes are evaluated: network lifetime TL , the network dis-
connection time TD , consensus convergence time TC and the
time taken by the algorithm to get the optimal solution TO .
A. Nominal scenario
In this scenario we set the initial energies vector ξ(0) to be
randomly distributed in the range [8, 10] · 103 Joule.
Firstly we consider a static network radii design where the
node radii ρi are assumed to be the same and tuned in order
to get the minimum of J(ρ) in Fig. 1, namely ρi = ρ =
1551-3203 (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
6
55
50
45
40
ρ
30
25
20
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
k x 10
4
Fig. 2. DERC dynamic evolution of radii ρi . The radii converge close to
ρ∗ = 25 value.
ρ∗ = 25 ∀i. In this case each node transmits with a power
consumption PTi (ρ∗ ) that is constant during time such that
the rate of discharge is constant.In Table I are reported the
performance in this scenario under different strategies when
the optimal network configuration is assessed. In particular for
the above static radii design it results: TC = 15, TL = 40539
and TD = 45562.
Then we consider the network when the distributed control
algorithm DHA proposed in [19] is implemented. This algo-
rithm tries to optimize the same our objective function J(ρ).
The algorithm starts from a full connected network topology
and at each control application step detects the node at highest
degree and removes a link that mostly reduces the objective
function. The aim of this operation is to simultaneously reduce
both the objective function and λn . To estimate the objective
function and carry out the above operation, a power iteration
based algorithm is used to compute λ2 and vn assuming a
symmetric graph topology. Further details about the DHA
algorithm may be found in the original paper [19].
In Table I are summarized the performance obtained for
DHA algorithm. Notice that the time TO to get the optimal
solution is expected to be long because the algorithm removes
one link per control step. This decreases the convergence rate
towards the optimal solution that in turn decrease the lifetime
TL (2.7 · 104 ).
Now we consider the same above network scenario when the
proposed DERC Algorithm 1 is applied initializing ρ(0) = 50.
The dynamic evolution of ρi (k) is reported in Fig. 2
showing that each node controls in a decentralized way its
transmission radius ρi (ρ) on the base of node residual energy,
so that it converges close to the optimal value ρ∗ = 25.
Therefore the final value of radii ρi (ρ) may be different
for each node according to its residual battery energy: the
effect is to balance the available energy of network nodes.
This strongly improves the performance in terms of lifetime
and disconnection time with respect to the other algorithms
as shown in Table I (i.e. TL = 69294, TD = 69371 and
TC = 15). Additionally the time TO to get the optimal value
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2016.2627478, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
7

Static design DHA DERC DERC-SINR

k̄ by computing the solution ρ∗ when ξ(k) = ξ(k̄). In case
TL (×103 ) 40 27 69 43
TD (×103 ) 46 32 69 43
of uncertain available energy variations due to the harvesting
TC 15 19 15 15 extra power consumption processes, the optimal frontier value
TO (×103 ) – 250 33 39.7 strongly varies during time. Notice that the proposed algorithm
¯
d(A) 44.8 12.48 43.4 42.1 is effective to get the objective function value close to the
λ2re 29.2 9.33 28.3 28.1
λnre 50 22.71 50 50
optimal frontier by online and decentralized operations.
||PT (ρ)||1 0.12 0.35 0.12 0.12 The performance of the proposed control algorithm can
J(ρ) (×10−3 ) 4.1 37.5 4.4 4.69 be improved by using a multi-hop version of the consensus
TABLE I
P ERFORMANCE INDEXES UNDER DIFFERENT RADII DESIGN AND CONTROL
algorithm (2) ad (10) (see [22], [26]).
STRATEGIES .

is lower than DHA algorithm. As expected J(ρ) is higher than V. C ONCLUSION

the optimal value obtained under the static radii design.
On the other side DHA algorithm is effective in reducing
λn = λnre and average node degree d(A)¯ than the proposed
DERC algorithm.
As further scenario, we consider the presence of the inter-
ference phenomena among nodes due to their transmission
power. Specifically we consider the standard interference
SINR (SIgnal to Noise Ratio) model ([24]) such that the
signal sent by node i-th and received at node j-th is affected
by the interference of the other nodes transmitting to node
j. Therefore the path loss formula
  is modified according to
P (ρ ) β
P Ti i
N0 + k6=j,i PP
Tk (rkj )
≥ P Rj · rρ0i where N0 is a baseband
noisy and k6=j,i PTk (rkj ) is the interference due to the
transmission of nodes different than i. In this way the higher
is the nodes transmission power, the more is the interference
and therefore the fault of a link between i and j. Therefore,
the equation (1) can be increased to improve the network
connectivity but taking into account the drawback due to the
effect of node interference. From the results of Table I it is
appear that the effect of nodes interference is mitigated by
the proposed algorithm. Indeed the controller tries to make
uniform the nodes transmission radii, thus avoiding exces-
sively high value of transmission power that could amplify
the interference phenomena.
B. Robustness in presence of uncertain energy variations
Now we evaluate the robustness of the considered algo-
rithms when random charge and discharge of the batteries
are considered. Specifically, we assume that 5% of nodes are
charged by the harvesting systems (i.e. Ns > 0) while 5%
of nodes are characterized by an extra power consumption
requirements (i.e. Ns < 0). In Fig. 3(a) it is shown the
network nodes energy under the static radii design. Notice
that the node with extra power consumption heavily affects
the lifetime (TL = 34281). In Fig. 3(b) and Fig. 3(c) are
respectively depicted the dynamic evolution of nodes energy
for the DHA and DERC algorithm. Note how the DERC
algorithm is effective in balancing nodes available energy
because nodes with extra power consumption are controlled to
have lower transmission radius than nodes with extra available
energy. This allows to get a larger lifetime (TL = 74955) than
the other strategies.
In Fig. 4 the resulting objective function J(ρ(ρ)) (continu-
ous line) is compared with the optimal frontier (dashed line).
Each point of the frontier is offline evaluated at each time step
In this paper, we have formulated a decentralized control
law of node transmission radii in order to simultaneously
minimize the network energy power consumption and max-
imize the network connectivity. A key feature of the proposed
control law is to be cooperative and fully decentralized such
that each node adapts its transmission radius just on the base
of information received from its neighbours and the available
energy. A stability analysis of the closed loop network under
the proposed radii control is formulated. An extensive simu-
lation validation has shown the effectiveness of the proposed
approach both in terms of network lifetime and monitoring
algorithm responsiveness when compared with a well known
decentralized strategy control law presented in literature.
R EFERENCES
[1] Industrial Wireless Technology for the 21st Century, Report, Technology
Foresight, 2004.
[2] J. Neuzil, O. Kreibich, R. Smid, A Distributed Fault Detection System
Based on IWSN for Machine Condition Monitoring, IEEE Transactions
on Industrial Informatics, 10,2, 2014.
[3] X. Jiang, J. Polastre, and D. Culler, Perpetual environmentally powered
sensor networks, Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on
Information processing in sensor networks, 2005
[4] R. Saber, R. Murray, Consensus Problems in Networks of Agents with
Switching Topology and Time-Delays, IEEE Transactions on Automatic
Control, 49,9, 2004.
[5] A. J. Dickson, S. Burton, M. Shepertycky, Y. F. Liu and Q. Li, Digitally
Controlled Energy Harvesting Power Management System, in IEEE
Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, 4,1, 2016.
[6] S Manfredi, A consensus based rate control scheme for ATM networks,
International Journal of Control, Automation, And Systems, vol. 10, p.
817-823, ISSN: 1598-6446, 2012
[7] S. Manfredi, M. Pagano, R. Raimo, Ultracapacitor-based Distributed
Energy Resources to support time-varying smart-grid power flows, Proc.
International Symposium IEEE Speedam 2012. vol. I, p. 1148-1153,
IEEE, ISBN: 9781467313001, Sorrento (Italy), 20-22 June 2012
[8] A. Aprem, C. R. Murthy and N. B. Mehta, Transmit Power Control
Policies for Energy Harvesting Sensors With Retransmissions, IEEE
Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, 7 5, pp. 895-906, 2013.
[9] S. Manfredi, An Algorithm for Fast Rendezvous Seeking of Wireless
Networked Robotic Systems, Ad Hoc Networks, vol. 11, 7, p. 1942-1950,
ISSN: 1570-8705, 2013
[10] S Manfredi, D Angeli, Frozen state conditions for exponential consensus
of time-varying cooperative nonlinear networks, Automatica 64, 182-189,
2016
[11] A. Aziz, P. Fitzpatrick, M. Ivanovich A Survey on Distributed Topol-
ogy Control Techniques for Extending the Lifetime of Battery Powered
Wireless Sensor Networks, IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials,
15,1, 2013
[12] F. Ge and Y. Wang, An adaptive energy efficient topology for wireless
sensor networks, Second International Conference on Future Generation
Communication and Networking, FGCN 2008.
[13] L. Shiu, F. Lin, C. Lee and C. Yang A Distributed Reliable and
Energy-Efficient Topology Control Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Network,
International Conference on Information Science and Applications, 2012

1551-3203 (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TII.2016.2627478, IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Informatics
8

10000
10000 10000

8000
8000 8000

6000
6000 6000

ξ
ξ

ξ
4000
4000 4000

2000
2000 2000

0
0 0 1 2 3 4 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 0 2 4 6 8
k x 10
4 k ×104 k 4
x 10

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 3. Dynamic evolution of the network nodes energy ξi in presence of uncertain energy variations: (a) static radii design, (b) DHA algorithm and (c)
DERC algorithm.

−3
x 10 SINR: The scheduling complexity of arbitrary topologies, Proceedings of
12
the 7th ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking
and Computing, MobiHoc06, 2006.
11
[25] F. J. Ovalle-Martnez, I. Stojmenovi, F. Garca-Nocetti, J. Solano-Gonzlez,
Finding minimum transmission radii for preserving connectivity and
10
constructing minimal spanning trees in ad hoc and sensor networks,
Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 65,2, 2005
9
[26] S. Manfredi, E. Di Tucci, Distributed control for energy efficient and fast
J (ρ)

consensus in wireless sensor networks, International Journal of Control,

8 DOI: 10.1080/00207179.2016.1201218 in press, 2016
7

5
4 tomatic Control and Adjunct Professor of System
0 2 4 6
k 4
x 10
Fig. 4. Dynamic evolution of the objective function J(ρ) (continuous line)
and the optimal frontier (dashed line) for the DERC algorithm. The DERC
algorithm still track the dynamic optimal frontier in presence of energy
available variations.
[14] P. Yang, R. Freeman, G. Gordon, K. Lynch, S. Srinivasa and R. Suk-
thankar, Decentralized estimation and control of graph connectivity in
mobile sensor networks, American Control Conference, 2008.
[15] F. Knorn, R. Stanojevic, M. Corless, R. Shorten, A Framework for
Decentralised Feedback Connectivity Control with Application to Sensor
Networks, International Journal of Control, 82,11, 2009
[16] L. Sabattini, C. Secchi, N. Chopra, Decentralized control for main-
tenance of strong connectivity for directed graphs, 21st Mediterranean
Conference on Control & Automation (MED), 2013
[17] S. Sardellitti, S. Barbarossa and A. Swami, Optimal Topology Control
and Power Allocation for Minimum Energy Consumption in Consensus
Networks, IEEE Transactions On Signal Processing, 60,1, 2012.
[18] C. Asensio-Marco, B. Beferull-Lozano, Energy Efficient Consensus
Over Complex Networks, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal
Processing, 9,2, 2015
[19] C. Asensio-Marco, B. Beferull-Lozano, Optimal topology design for
energy efficient consensus in broadcast wireless sensor networks, IEEE
International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2014
[20] J. Song and Y. Tan, Energy consumption analysis of ZigBee-based energy
harvesting wireless sensor networks, IEEE ICC Systems, 2012
[21] P. Moravek, D. Komosny , Energy Demands of 802.15.4/ZigBee Com-
munication with IRIS Sensor Motes, Transactions on signal processing,
978-1-4577-1411-5/11, 2011.
[22] S. Manfredi, Design of a multi-hop dynamic consensus algorithm over
wireless sensor networks, Control Engineering Practice, 21,4, 2013
[23] Chai Wah Wu, On RayleighRitz ratios of a generalized Laplacian matrix
of directed graphs., Linear Algebra and its Applications, 402, 2005.
[24] T. Moscibroda, R.Wattenhofer, A. Zollinger, Topology control meets
Sabato Manfredi is Assistant Professor of Au-
8 Dynamics and Industrial Automation at the De-
partment of Electrical Engineering and Informa-
tion Technology, University of Naples Federico II,
Italy. He is also a member of the Control and
Power Group, Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Department, Imperial College - London, UK. His
research interests are primarily in automatic control,
with a special emphasis on the analysis and dis-
tributed/decentralized control of linear and nonlinear
time-varying multi agent systems, complex networks and Cyber-Physical
Systems, communication and sensor/robot networks. He has published more
than 70 scientific publications including 14 single-author papers and is author
of the book: Multilayer Control of Networked Cyber-Physical Systems. Appli-
cation to Monitoring, Autonomous and Robot Systems (Advances in Industrial
Control Series, Springer 2016). He collaborates with many international
universities and companies, holds European and Italian patents, is a founding
member of an academic spin-off, and is involved in a range of academic and
industrial projects.
Edmondo Di Tucci receives in 2010 the Master
degree in Informatic Engineering (automatic control
curriculum) at University of Naples Federico II and
in 2012 a postgraduate in Robotics and Intelligent
Systems. He is familiar in programming microcon-
trollers and FPGA prototyping systems and with
the design of electronic circuits. Since 2003 he
works at www.smartsoft.it as Developer and System
Integrator in the field of telecommunications He also
works on various research project at University of
Naples Federico II with many publications in the
field of network control and synchronization. During last 4 years he developed
many iOS and Android applications.

1551-3203 (c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.