Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

submittedVersion

Publication Date

4-2015

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost, WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are used to make optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process (MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs.

Keywords

Wireless sensor networks, Markov decision processes (MDPs), stochastic control, optimization methods, decision-making tools, multi-agent systems

Discipline

Computer Sciences | Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials

Volume

17

Issue

3

First Page

1239

Last Page

1267

ISSN

1553-877X

Identifier

10.1109/COMST.2015.2420686

Publisher

IEEE

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2015.2420686

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