  The transmission rate, delivery reliability and network lifetime are three
fundamental but conflicting design objectives in energy-constrained wireless
sensor networks. In this paper, we address the optimal
rate-reliability-lifetime tradeoff with link capacity constraint, reliability
constraint and energy constraint. By introducing the weight parameters, we
combine the objectives at rate, reliability, and lifetime into a single
objective to characterize the tradeoff among them. However, the optimization
formulation of the rate-reliability-reliability tradeoff is neither separable
nor convex. Through a series of transformations, a separable and convex problem
is derived, and an efficient distributed Subgradient Dual Decomposition
algorithm (SDD) is proposed. Numerical examples confirm its convergence. Also,
numerical examples investigate the impact of weight parameters on the rate
utility, reliability utility and network lifetime, which provide a guidance to
properly set the value of weight parameters for a desired performance of WSNs
according to the realistic application's requirements.
