Synthesizing power management strategies for wireless sensor networks with UPPAAL-STRATEGO

Effective power management has become a key concern in the design of wireless sensor networks. Dynamic power management refers to strategies which selectively switch between several power states of a device during the runtime in order to achieve a tradeoff between power consumption and performance. In this article, we present a novel methodology that exploits current model-checking technology for automatic synthesis for dynamic power management. The generic system model for dynamic power management is modeled as a network of timed games. And the synthesis objectives are expressed as synthesis queries. Subsequently, automatic synthesis of power management strategies is performed by UPPAAL-STRATEGO with respect to the synthesis queries. Once a strategy has been constructed, its performance can be analyzed through statistical model-checking using the same tool. The modeling and synthesizing procedures are illustrated with a running example. Finally, the applicability of the methodology is assessed by synthesizing and evaluating a range of power management strategies for a concrete sensor node. Our methodology can be employed to help designers in constructing dynamic power management strategies for wireless sensor networks in practical applications.