Simulated annealing-based reprogramming scheme of wireless sensor nodes

Code dissemination is a main component of reprogramming which enables over-the-air software update in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we present a Simulated Annealing-based reprogramming scheme (SA). Unlike well-known wireless reprogramming data dissemination protocols such as Deluge, whose primary goal is to minimize energy consumption, SA’s design criterion is to minimize energy consumption while balancing the energy consumption of the entire sensor network. To achieve these goals, we first establish the NP-hard model of data dissemination routing and its simplified form. Then, the relaying nodes and corresponding communication radius are determined by their remaining energy and the balanced consumption of the covered nodes, respectively. Finally, the iterative optimization strategy with simulated annealing is achieved. Physical experimental results and numerical analysis show that the proposed algorithm can find the near-optimal solutions to reduce and balance the total energy consumption when there is an energy imbalance among different nodes.