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44 \journal{Journal of Supercomputing}
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70 \title{Multiround Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks}
72 %% use optional labels to link authors explicitly to addresses:
73 %% \author[label1,label2]{}
76 %\author{Ali Kadhum Idrees, Karine Deschinkel, \\
77 %Michel Salomon, and Rapha\"el Couturier}
79 %\thanks{are members in the AND team - DISC department - FEMTO-ST Institute, University of Franche-Comt\'e, Belfort, France.
80 % e-mail: ali.idness@edu.univ-fcomte.fr, $\lbrace$karine.deschinkel, michel.salomon, raphael.couturier$\rbrace$@univ-fcomte.fr.}% <-this % stops a space
81 %\thanks{}% <-this % stops a space
83 %\address{FEMTO-ST Institute, University of Franche-Comt\'e, Belfort, France. \\
84 %e-mail: ali.idness@edu.univ-fcomte.fr, \\
85 %$\lbrace$karine.deschinkel, michel.salomon, raphael.couturier$\rbrace$@univ-fcomte.fr.}
87 \author{Ali Kadhum Idrees$^{a,b}$, Karine Deschinkel$^{a}$, \\ Michel
88 Salomon$^{a}$, and Rapha\"el Couturier $^{a}$ \\ $^{a}${\em{FEMTO-ST
89 Institute/CNRS, \\ Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comt\'e,
90 Belfort, France}} \\ $^{b}${\em{Department of Computer Science, University
91 of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq}} }
94 Coverage and lifetime are two paramount problems in Wireless Sensor Networks
95 (WSNs). In this paper, a method called Multiround Distributed Lifetime Coverage
96 Optimization protocol (MuDiLCO) is proposed to maintain the coverage and to
97 improve the lifetime in wireless sensor networks. The area of interest is first
98 divided into subregions and then the MuDiLCO protocol is distributed on the
99 sensor nodes in each subregion. The proposed MuDiLCO protocol works in periods
100 during which sets of sensor nodes are scheduled, with one set for each round of
101 a period, to remain active during the sensing phase and thus ensure coverage so
102 as to maximize the WSN lifetime. The decision process is
103 carried out by a leader node, which solves an optimization problem to produce
104 the best representative sets to be used during the rounds of the sensing
105 phase. The optimization problem formulated as an integer program is solved to
106 optimality through a Branch-and-Bound method for small instances. For larger
107 instances, the best feasible solution found by the solver after a given time
108 limit threshold is considered.
109 Compared with some existing protocols, simulation results based on multiple
110 criteria (energy consumption, coverage ratio, and so on) show that the proposed
111 protocol can prolong efficiently the network lifetime and improve the coverage
116 Wireless Sensor Networks, Area Coverage, Network Lifetime,
117 Optimization, Scheduling, Distributed Computation.
122 \section{Introduction}
124 \indent The fast developments of low-cost sensor devices and wireless
125 communications have allowed the emergence of WSNs. A WSN includes a large number
126 of small, limited-power sensors that can sense, process, and transmit data over
127 a wireless communication. They communicate with each other by using multi-hop
128 wireless communications and cooperate together to monitor the area of interest,
129 so that each measured data can be reported to a monitoring center called sink
130 for further analysis~\cite{Sudip03}. There are several fields of application
131 covering a wide spectrum for a WSN, including health, home, environmental,
132 military, and industrial applications~\cite{Akyildiz02}.
134 On the one hand sensor nodes run on batteries with limited capacities, and it is
135 often costly or simply impossible to replace and/or recharge batteries,
136 especially in remote and hostile environments. Obviously, to achieve a long life
137 of the network it is important to conserve battery power. Therefore, lifetime
138 optimization is one of the most critical issues in wireless sensor networks. On
139 the other hand we must guarantee coverage over the area of interest. To fulfill
140 these two objectives, the main idea is to take advantage of overlapping sensing
141 regions to turn-off redundant sensor nodes and thus save energy. In this paper,
142 we concentrate on the area coverage problem, with the objective of maximizing
143 the network lifetime by using an optimized multiround scheduling.
145 The MuDiLCO protocol (for Multiround Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization
146 protocol) presented in this paper is an extension of the approach introduced
147 in~\cite{idrees2015distributed}.
148 % In~\cite{idrees2015distributed}, the protocol is
149 %deployed over only two subregions. Simulation results have shown that it was
150 %more interesting to divide the area into several subregions, given the
151 %computation complexity.
154 Compared to our previous paper~\cite{idrees2015distributed}, in this one we study the
155 possibility of dividing the sensing phase into multiple rounds. In fact, in this paper we make a multiround optimization, while it was
156 a single round optimization in our previous work. The idea is
157 to take advantage of the pre-sensing phase to plan the sensor's activity for
158 several rounds instead of one, thus saving energy. In addition, when the
159 optimization problem becomes more complex, its resolution is stopped after a
160 given time threshold. In this paper we also analyse the performance of our protocol according to the number of primary points used (area coverage is replaced by the coverage of a set of particular points called primary points, see section~\ref{pp}).}
162 The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The next section
163 reviews the related works in the field. Section~\ref{pd} is devoted to the
164 description of MuDiLCO protocol. Section~\ref{exp} introduces the experimental
165 framework, it describes the simulation setup and the different metrics used to
166 assess the performances. Section~\ref{analysis} shows the simulation results
167 obtained using the discrete event simulator OMNeT++ \cite{varga}. They fully
168 demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach. Finally, we give
169 concluding remarks and some suggestions for future works in
170 Section~\ref{sec:conclusion}.
172 \section{Related works}
175 \indent This section is dedicated to the various approaches proposed in the
176 literature for the coverage lifetime maximization problem, where the objective
177 is to optimally schedule sensors' activities in order to extend network lifetime
178 in WSNs. Cardei and Wu \cite{cardei2006energy} provide a taxonomy for coverage
179 algorithms in WSNs according to several design choices:
181 \item Sensors scheduling algorithm implementation, i.e. centralized or
182 distributed/localized algorithms.
183 \item The objective of sensor coverage, i.e. to maximize the network lifetime or
184 to minimize the number of active sensors during a sensing round.
185 \item The homogeneous or heterogeneous nature of the nodes, in terms of sensing
186 or communication capabilities.
187 \item The node deployment method, which may be random or deterministic.
188 \item Additional requirements for energy-efficient and connected coverage.
191 The choice of non-disjoint or disjoint cover sets (sensors participate or not in
192 many cover sets) can be added to the above list.
194 \subsection{Centralized approaches}
196 The major approach is to divide/organize the sensors into a suitable number of
197 cover sets where each set completely covers an interest region and to activate
198 these cover sets successively. The centralized algorithms always provide nearly
199 or close to optimal solution since the algorithm has global view of the whole
200 network. Note that centralized algorithms have the advantage of requiring very
201 low processing power from the sensor nodes, which usually have limited
202 processing capabilities. The main drawback of this kind of approach is its
203 higher cost in communications, since the node that will make the decision needs
204 information from all the sensor nodes. Exact or heuristic
205 approaches are designed to provide cover sets. Contrary to exact methods,
206 heuristic ones can handle very large and centralized problems. They are
207 proposed to reduce computational overhead such as energy consumption, delay,
208 and generally allow to increase the network lifetime.
210 The first algorithms proposed in the literature consider that the cover sets are
211 disjoint: a sensor node appears in exactly one of the generated cover
212 sets~\cite{abrams2004set,cardei2005improving,Slijepcevic01powerefficient}. In
213 the case of non-disjoint algorithms \cite{pujari2011high}, sensors may
214 participate in more than one cover set. In some cases, this may prolong the
215 lifetime of the network in comparison to the disjoint cover set algorithms, but
216 designing algorithms for non-disjoint cover sets generally induces a higher
217 order of complexity. Moreover, in case of a sensor's failure, non-disjoint
218 scheduling policies are less resilient and reliable because a sensor may be
219 involved in more than one cover sets.
221 In~\cite{yang2014maximum}, the authors have considered a linear programming
222 approach to select the minimum number of working sensor nodes, in order to
223 preserve a maximum coverage and to extend lifetime of the network. Cheng et
224 al.~\cite{cheng2014energy} have defined a heuristic algorithm called Cover Sets
225 Balance (CSB), which chooses a set of active nodes using the tuple (data
226 coverage range, residual energy). Then, they have introduced a new Correlated
227 Node Set Computing (CNSC) algorithm to find the correlated node set for a given
228 node. After that, they proposed a High Residual Energy First (HREF) node
229 selection algorithm to minimize the number of active nodes so as to prolong the
230 network lifetime. Various centralized methods based on column generation
231 approaches have also been
232 proposed~\cite{gentili2013,castano2013column,rossi2012exact,deschinkel2012column}.
233 In~\cite{gentili2013}, authors highlight the trade-off between
234 the network lifetime and the coverage percentage. They show that network
235 lifetime can be hugely improved by decreasing the coverage ratio.
237 \subsection{Distributed approaches}
239 In distributed and localized coverage algorithms, the required computation to
240 schedule the activity of sensor nodes will be done by the cooperation among
241 neighboring nodes. These algorithms may require more computation power for the
242 processing by the cooperating sensor nodes, but they are more scalable for large
243 WSNs. Localized and distributed algorithms generally result in non-disjoint set
246 Many distributed algorithms have been developed to perform the scheduling so as
247 to preserve coverage, see for example
248 \cite{Gallais06,Tian02,Ye03,Zhang05,HeinzelmanCB02, yardibi2010distributed,
249 prasad2007distributed,Misra}. Distributed algorithms typically operate in
250 rounds for a predetermined duration. At the beginning of each round, a sensor
251 exchanges information with its neighbors and makes a decision to either remain
252 turned on or to go to sleep for the round. This decision is basically made on
253 simple greedy criteria like the largest uncovered area
254 \cite{Berman05efficientenergy} or maximum uncovered targets
255 \cite{lu2003coverage}. The Distributed Adaptive Sleep Scheduling Algorithm
256 (DASSA) \cite{yardibi2010distributed} does not require location information of
257 sensors while maintaining connectivity and satisfying a user defined coverage
258 target. In DASSA, nodes use the residual energy levels and feedback from the
259 sink for scheduling the activity of their neighbors. This feedback mechanism
260 reduces the randomness in scheduling that would otherwise occur due to the
261 absence of location information. In \cite{ChinhVu}, the author have designed a
262 novel distributed heuristic, called Distributed Energy-efficient Scheduling for
263 k-coverage (DESK), which ensures that the energy consumption among the sensors
264 is balanced and the lifetime maximized while the coverage requirement is
265 maintained. This heuristic works in rounds, requires only one-hop neighbor
266 information, and each sensor decides its status (active or sleep) based on the
267 perimeter coverage model from~\cite{Huang:2003:CPW:941350.941367}.
269 The works presented in \cite{Bang, Zhixin, Zhang} focus on coverage-aware,
270 distributed energy-efficient, and distributed clustering methods respectively,
271 which aim at extending the network lifetime, while the coverage is ensured.
272 More recently, Shibo et al. \cite{Shibo} have expressed the coverage problem as
273 a minimum weight submodular set cover problem and proposed a Distributed
274 Truncated Greedy Algorithm (DTGA) to solve it. They take advantage from both
275 temporal and spatial correlations between data sensed by different sensors, and
276 leverage prediction, to improve the lifetime. In \cite{xu2001geography}, Xu et
277 al. have described an algorithm, called Geographical Adaptive Fidelity (GAF),
278 which uses geographic location information to divide the area of interest into
279 fixed square grids. Within each grid, it keeps only one node staying awake to
280 take the responsibility of sensing and communication.
282 Some other approaches (outside the scope of our work) do not consider a
283 synchronized and predetermined time-slot where the sensors are active or not.
284 Indeed, each sensor maintains its own timer and its wake-up time is randomized
285 \cite{Ye03} or regulated \cite{cardei2005maximum} over time.
287 \section{MuDiLCO protocol description}
290 \subsection{Assumptions and primary points}
292 \textcolor{green}{Assumptions and coverage model are identical to those presented in~\cite{idrees2015distributed}.}
296 We consider a randomly and uniformly deployed network consisting of static
297 wireless sensors. The sensors are deployed in high density to ensure initially
298 a high coverage ratio of the interested area. We assume that all nodes are
299 homogeneous in terms of communication and processing capabilities, and
300 heterogeneous from the point of view of energy provision. Each sensor is
301 supposed to get information on its location either through hardware such as
302 embedded GPS or through location discovery algorithms.
304 To model a sensor node's coverage area, we consider the boolean disk coverage
305 model which is the most widely used sensor coverage model in the
306 literature. Thus, each sensor has a constant sensing range $R_s$ and all space
307 points within the disk centered at the sensor with the radius of the sensing
308 range is said to be covered by this sensor. We also assume that the
309 communication range satisfies $R_c \geq 2R_s$. In fact, Zhang and
310 Zhou~\cite{Zhang05} proved that if the transmission range fulfills the previous
311 hypothesis, a complete coverage of a convex area implies connectivity among the
314 \textcolor{green}{We consider a scenario where sensors are deployed in high density to ensure initially
315 a high coverage ratio of the interested area. Each sensor has a predefined sensing range $R_s$, an initial energy supply (eventually different from each other) and is supposed to be equipped with module for locating its geographical positions. All space points within the disk centered at the sensor with the radius of the sensing
316 range is said to be covered by this sensor.}
318 \indent Instead of working with the coverage area, we consider for each sensor a
319 set of points called primary points~\cite{idrees2014coverage}. We assume that
320 the sensing disk defined by a sensor is covered if all the primary points of
321 this sensor are covered. By knowing the position of wireless sensor node
322 (centered at the the position $\left(p_x,p_y\right)$) and its sensing range
323 $R_s$, we define up to 25 primary points $X_1$ to $X_{25}$ as decribed on
324 Figure~\ref{fig1}. The optimal number of primary points is investigated in
325 section~\ref{ch4:sec:04:06}.
327 The coordinates of the primary points are defined as follows:\\
328 %$(p_x,p_y)$ = point center of wireless sensor node\\
330 $X_2=( p_x + R_s * (1), p_y + R_s * (0) )$\\
331 $X_3=( p_x + R_s * (-1), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
332 $X_4=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (1) )$\\
333 $X_5=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (-1 )) $\\
334 $X_6=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
335 $X_7=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
336 $X_8=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
337 $X_9=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
338 $X_{10}= ( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
339 $X_{11}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0))$\\
340 $X_{12}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
341 $X_{13}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
342 $X_{14}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{1}{2})) $\\
343 $X_{15}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{1}{2})) $\\
344 $X_{16}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{- 1}{2})) $\\
345 $X_{17}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{- 1}{2})) $\\
346 $X_{18}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
347 $X_{19}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
348 $X_{20}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{1}{2})) $\\
349 $X_{21}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (-\frac{1}{2})) $\\
350 $X_{22}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{1}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2})) $\\
351 $X_{23}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{- 1}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2})) $\\
352 $X_{24}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{- 1}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2})) $\\
353 $X_{25}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{1}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2})) $.
357 \includegraphics[scale=0.375]{fig26.pdf}
359 \caption{Wireless sensor node represented by up to 25~primary points}
362 \subsection{Background idea}
364 The WSN area of interest is, at first, divided into
365 regular homogeneous subregions using a divide-and-conquer algorithm. Then, our protocol will be executed in a distributed way in each
366 subregion simultaneously to schedule nodes' activities for one sensing
367 period. Sensor nodes are assumed to be deployed almost uniformly and with high
368 density over the region. The regular subdivision is made so that the number
369 of hops between any pairs of sensors inside a subregion is less than or equal
372 As can be seen in Figure~\ref{fig2}, our protocol works in periods fashion,
373 where each period is divided into 4~phases: Information~Exchange,
374 Leader~Election, Decision, and Sensing. \textcolor{green}{Compared to protocol DiLCO described in~\cite{idrees2015distributed}} each sensing phase is itself
375 divided into $T$ rounds of equal duration and for each round
376 a set of sensors (a cover set) is responsible for the sensing task. In this way
377 a multiround optimization process is performed during each period after
378 Information~Exchange and Leader~Election phases, in order to produce $T$ cover
379 sets that will take the mission of sensing for $T$ rounds. \textcolor{green}{Algorithm~\ref{alg:MuDiLCO} is
380 executed by each sensor node~$s_j$ (with enough remaining energy) at the beginning of a period.}
382 \centering \includegraphics[width=125mm]{Modelgeneral.pdf} % 70mm
383 \caption{The MuDiLCO protocol scheme executed on each node}
387 \textcolor{green}{As already described in~\cite{idrees2015distributed}}, two types of packets are used by the proposed protocol:
388 \begin{enumerate}[(a)]
389 \item INFO packet: such a packet will be sent by each sensor node to all the
390 nodes inside a subregion for information exchange.
391 \item Active-Sleep packet: sent by the leader to all the nodes inside a
392 subregion to inform them to remain Active or to go Sleep during the sensing
396 There are five status for each sensor node in the network:
397 \begin{enumerate}[(a)]
398 \item LISTENING: sensor node is waiting for a decision (to be active or not);
399 \item COMPUTATION: sensor node has been elected as leader and applies the
400 optimization process;
401 \item ACTIVE: sensor node is taking part in the monitoring of the area;
402 \item SLEEP: sensor node is turned off to save energy;
403 \item COMMUNICATION: sensor node is transmitting or receiving packet.
409 This protocol minimizes the impact of unexpected node failure (not due to
410 batteries running out of energy), because it works in periods.
411 On the one hand, if a node failure is detected before making the decision, the
412 node will not participate to this phase, and, on the other hand, if the node
413 failure occurs after the decision, the sensing task of the network will be
414 temporarily affected: only during the period of sensing until a new period
415 starts. The duration of the rounds is a predefined
416 parameter. Round duration should be long enough to hide the system control
417 overhead and short enough to minimize the negative effects in case of node
420 The energy consumption and some other constraints can easily be taken into
421 account, since the sensors can update and then exchange their information
422 (including their residual energy) at the beginning of each period. However, the
423 pre-sensing phases (Information Exchange, Leader Election, and Decision) are
424 energy consuming for some nodes, even when they do not join the network to
430 At the beginning of each period, each sensor wich has enough remaining energy ($RE_j$) to be alive during at least one round ( $E_{R}$ is the amount of energy
431 required to be alive during one round) sends (line 3 of algorithm~\ref{alg:MuDiLCO}) its position, remaining energy $RE_j$, and the number
432 of neighbors $NBR_j$ to all wireless sensor nodes in its subregion by using an
433 INFO packet (containing information on position coordinates, current remaining
434 energy, sensor node ID, number of its one-hop live neighbors) and then waits for
435 packets sent by other nodes (line 4).
437 After that, each node will have information about
438 all the sensor nodes in the subregion.
439 The nodes in the same subregion
440 will select (line 5) a Wireless Sensor Node Leader (WSNL) based on the received information from all other nodes in
441 the same subregion. The selection criteria are, in order of importance: larger
442 number of neighbors, larger remaining energy, and then in case of equality,
443 larger index. Observations on previous simulations suggest to use the number of
444 one-hop neighbors as the primary criterion to reduce energy consumption due to
445 the communications.\\
450 %Each WSNL will solve an integer program to select which cover
451 % sets will be activated in the following sensing phase to cover the subregion
452 % to which it belongs. $T$ cover sets will be produced, one for each round. The
453 % WSNL will send an Active-Sleep packet to each sensor in the subregion based on
454 % the algorithm's results, indicating if the sensor should be active or not in
455 % each round of the sensing phase.
456 \subsection{Multiround Optimization model}
458 As shown in Algorithm~\ref{alg:MuDiLCO} at line 8, the leader (WNSL) will execute an optimization
459 algorithm based on an integer program. to select which cover
460 sets will be activated in the following sensing phase to cover the subregion
461 to which it belongs. $T$ cover sets will be produced, one for each round. The
462 WSNL will send an Active-Sleep packet to each sensor in the subregion based on
463 the algorithm's results (line 10), indicating if the sensor should be active or not in
464 each round of the sensing phase.
467 The integer program is based on the model
468 proposed by \cite{pedraza2006} with some modifications, where the objective is
469 to find a maximum number of disjoint cover sets. To fulfill this goal, the
470 authors proposed an integer program which forces undercoverage and overcoverage
471 of targets to become minimal at the same time. They use binary variables
472 $x_{jl}$ to indicate if sensor $j$ belongs to cover set $l$. In our model, we
473 consider binary variables $X_{t,j}$ to determine the possibility of activating
474 sensor $j$ during round $t$ of a given sensing phase. We also consider primary
475 points as targets. The set of primary points is denoted by $P$ and the set of
476 sensors by $J$. Only sensors able to be alive during at least one round are
477 involved in the integer program. \textcolor{green}{Note that the proposed integer program is an extension of that formulated in~\cite{idrees2015distributed},
478 variables are now indexed in addition with the number of round $t$.}
480 For a primary point $p$, let $\alpha_{j,p}$ denote the indicator function of
481 whether the point $p$ is covered, that is:
483 \alpha_{j,p} = \left \{
485 1 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$ is covered} \\
486 & \mbox{by sensor node $j$}, \\
487 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
491 The number of active sensors that cover the primary point $p$ during
492 round $t$ is equal to $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{j,p} * X_{t,j}$ where:
496 1& \mbox{if sensor $j$ is active during round $t$,} \\
497 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
501 We define the Overcoverage variable $\Theta_{t,p}$ as:
503 \Theta_{t,p} = \left \{
505 0 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$}\\
506 & \mbox{is not covered during round $t$,}\\
507 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{tj} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
511 More precisely, $\Theta_{t,p}$ represents the number of active sensor nodes
512 minus one that cover the primary point $p$ during round $t$. The
513 Undercoverage variable $U_{t,p}$ of the primary point $p$ during round $t$ is
518 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered during round $t$,} \\
519 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
524 Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows:
526 \min \sum_{t=1}^{T} \sum_{p=1}^{|P|} \left(W_{\theta}* \Theta_{t,p} + W_{U} * U_{t,p} \right) \label{eq15}
531 \sum_{j=1}^{|J|} \alpha_{j,p} * X_{t,j} = \Theta_{t,p} - U_{t,p} + 1 \label{eq16} \hspace{6 mm} \forall p \in P, t = 1,\dots,T
535 \sum_{t=1}^{T} X_{t,j} \leq \floor*{RE_{j}/E_{R}} \hspace{10 mm}\forall j \in J\hspace{6 mm}
540 X_{t,j} \in \lbrace0,1\rbrace, \hspace{10 mm} \forall j \in J, t = 1,\dots,T \label{eq17}
544 U_{t,p} \in \lbrace0,1\rbrace, \hspace{10 mm}\forall p \in P, t = 1,\dots,T \label{eq18}
548 \Theta_{t,p} \geq 0 \hspace{10 mm}\forall p \in P, t = 1,\dots,T \label{eq178}
552 \item $X_{t,j}$: indicates whether or not the sensor $j$ is actively sensing
553 during round $t$ (1 if yes and 0 if not);
554 \item $\Theta_{t,p}$ - {\it overcoverage}: the number of sensors minus one that
555 are covering the primary point $p$ during round $t$;
556 \item $U_{t,p}$ - {\it undercoverage}: indicates whether or not the primary
557 point $p$ is being covered during round $t$ (1 if not covered and 0 if
561 The first group of constraints indicates that some primary point $p$ should be
562 covered by at least one sensor and, if it is not always the case, overcoverage
563 and undercoverage variables help balancing the restriction equations by taking
564 positive values. The constraint given by equation~(\ref{eq144}) guarantees that
565 the sensor has enough energy ($RE_j$ corresponds to its remaining energy) to be
566 alive during the selected rounds knowing that $E_{R}$ is the amount of energy
567 required to be alive during one round.
569 There are two main objectives. First, we limit the overcoverage of primary
570 points in order to activate a minimum number of sensors. Second we prevent the
571 absence of monitoring on some parts of the subregion by minimizing the
572 undercoverage. The weights $W_\theta$ and $W_U$ must be properly chosen so as
573 to guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each round.
574 In our simulations, priority is given to the coverage by choosing $W_{U}$ very
575 large compared to $W_{\theta}$.
577 The size of the problem depends on the number of variables and
578 constraints. The number of variables is linked to the number of alive sensors
579 $A \subseteq J$, the number of rounds $T$, and the number of primary points
580 $P$. Thus the integer program contains $A*T$ variables of type $X_{t,j}$,
581 $P*T$ overcoverage variables and $P*T$ undercoverage variables. The number of
582 constraints is equal to $P*T$ (for constraints (\ref{eq16})) $+$ $A$ (for
583 constraints (\ref{eq144})).
586 \subsection{Sensing phase}
588 The sensing phase consists of $T$ rounds. Each sensor node in the subregion will
589 receive an Active-Sleep packet from WSNL, informing it to stay awake or to go to
590 sleep for each round of the sensing phase. Algorithm~\ref{alg:MuDiLCO}, which
591 will be executed by each sensor node~$s_j$ at the beginning of a period,
592 explains how the Active-Sleep packet is obtained.
595 \begin{algorithm}[h!]
597 \If{ $RE_j \geq E_{R}$ }{
598 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
599 \emph{Send $INFO()$ packet to other nodes in the subregion}\;
600 \emph{Wait $INFO()$ packet from other nodes in the subregion}\;
602 \emph{LeaderID = Leader election}\;
603 \If{$ s_j.ID = LeaderID $}{
604 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMPUTATION}\;
605 \emph{$\left\{\left(X_{1,k},\dots,X_{T,k}\right)\right\}_{k \in J}$ =
606 Execute Integer Program Algorithm($T,J$)}\;
607 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
608 \emph{Send $ActiveSleep()$ packet to each node $k$ in subregion: a packet \\
609 with vector of activity scheduling $(X_{1,k},\dots,X_{T,k})$}\;
610 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
613 \emph{$s_j.status$ = LISTENING}\;
614 \emph{Wait $ActiveSleep()$ packet from the Leader}\;
615 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
618 \Else { Exclude $s_j$ from entering in the current sensing phase}
620 \caption{MuDiLCO($s_j$)}
625 \section{Experimental framework}
628 \subsection{Simulation setup}
630 We conducted a series of simulations to evaluate the efficiency and the
631 relevance of our approach, using the discrete event simulator OMNeT++
632 \cite{varga}. The simulation parameters are summarized in Table~\ref{table3}.
633 Each experiment for a network is run over 25~different random topologies and the
634 results presented hereafter are the average of these 25 runs.
635 We performed simulations for five different densities varying from 50 to
636 250~nodes deployed over a $50 \times 25~m^2 $ sensing field. More precisely,
637 the deployment is controlled at a coarse scale in order to ensure that the
638 deployed nodes can cover the sensing field with the given sensing range.
641 \caption{Relevant parameters for network initializing.}
645 Parameter & Value \\ [0.5ex]
647 Sensing field size & $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ \\
648 Network size & 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250~nodes \\
649 Initial energy & 500-700~joules \\
650 Sensing time for one round & 60 Minutes \\
651 $E_{R}$ & 36 Joules\\
659 Our protocol is declined into four versions: MuDiLCO-1,
660 MuDiLCO-3, MuDiLCO-5, and MuDiLCO-7, corresponding respectively to $T=1,3,5,7$
661 ($T$ the number of rounds in one sensing period). Since the time resolution
662 may be prohibitive when the size of the problem increases, a time limit
663 threshold has been fixed when solving large instances. In these cases, the
664 solver returns the best solution found, which is not necessary the optimal
665 one. In practice, we only set time limit values for $T=5$ and $T=7$. In fact,
666 for $T=5$ we limited the time for 250~nodes, whereas for $T=7$ it was for the
667 three largest network sizes. Therefore we used the following values (in
668 second): 0.03 for 250~nodes when $T=5$, while for $T=7$ we chose 0.03, 0.06,
669 and 0.08 for respectively 150, 200, and 250~nodes. These time limit
670 thresholds have been set empirically. The basic idea is to consider the
671 average execution time to solve the integer programs to optimality for 100
672 nodes and then to adjust the time linearly according to the increasing network
673 size. After that, this threshold value is increased if necessary so that the
674 solver is able to deliver a feasible solution within the time limit. In fact,
675 selecting the optimal values for the time limits will be investigated in the
678 In the following, we will make comparisons with two other methods. The first
679 method, called DESK and proposed by \cite{ChinhVu}, is a full distributed
680 coverage algorithm. The second method, called GAF~\cite{xu2001geography},
681 consists in dividing the region into fixed squares. During the decision phase,
682 in each square, one sensor is then chosen to remain active during the sensing
685 Some preliminary experiments were performed to study the choice of the number of
686 subregions which subdivides the sensing field, considering different network
687 sizes. They show that as the number of subregions increases, so does the network
688 lifetime. Moreover, it makes the MuDiLCO protocol more robust against random
689 network disconnection due to node failures. However, too many subdivisions
690 reduce the advantage of the optimization. In fact, there is a balance between
691 the benefit from the optimization and the execution time needed to solve it. In
692 the following we have set the number of subregions to 16 \textcolor{green}{as recommended in~\cite{idrees2015distributed}}.
694 \subsection{Energy model}
695 \textcolor{green}{The energy consumption model is detailed in~\cite{}. It is based on the model proposed by~\cite{ChinhVu}. We refer to the sensor node Medusa~II which
696 uses an Atmels AVR ATmega103L microcontroller~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} to use numerical values.}
697 \textcolor{red}{Est-ce qu'il faut en ecrire plus et redonner le tableau de valeurs?}
699 \subsection{Energy model}
701 We use an energy consumption model proposed by~\cite{ChinhVu} and based on
702 \cite{raghunathan2002energy} with slight modifications. The energy consumption
703 for sending/receiving the packets is added, whereas the part related to the
704 sensing range is removed because we consider a fixed sensing range.
706 For our energy consumption model, we refer to the sensor node Medusa~II which
707 uses an Atmels AVR ATmega103L microcontroller~\cite{raghunathan2002energy}. The
708 typical architecture of a sensor is composed of four subsystems: the MCU
709 subsystem which is capable of computation, communication subsystem (radio) which
710 is responsible for transmitting/receiving messages, the sensing subsystem that
711 collects data, and the power supply which powers the complete sensor node
712 \cite{raghunathan2002energy}. Each of the first three subsystems can be turned
713 on or off depending on the current status of the sensor. Energy consumption
714 (expressed in milliWatt per second) for the different status of the sensor is
715 summarized in Table~\ref{table4}.
718 \caption{The Energy Consumption Model}
720 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}
722 Sensor status & MCU & Radio & Sensing & Power (mW) \\ [0.5ex]
724 LISTENING & on & on & on & 20.05 \\
726 ACTIVE & on & off & on & 9.72 \\
728 SLEEP & off & off & off & 0.02 \\
730 COMPUTATION & on & on & on & 26.83 \\
737 For the sake of simplicity we ignore the energy needed to turn on the radio, to
738 start up the sensor node, to move from one status to another, etc.
739 Thus, when a sensor becomes active (i.e., it has already chosen its status), it
740 can turn its radio off to save battery. MuDiLCO uses two types of packets for
741 communication. The size of the INFO packet and Active-Sleep packet are 112~bits
742 and 24~bits respectively. The value of energy spent to send a 1-bit-content
743 message is obtained by using the equation in ~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} to
744 calculate the energy cost for transmitting messages and we propose the same
745 value for receiving the packets. The energy needed to send or receive a 1-bit
746 packet is equal to 0.2575~mW.
748 The initial energy of each node is randomly set in the interval $[500;700]$. A
749 sensor node will not participate in the next round if its remaining energy is
750 less than $E_{R}=36~\mbox{Joules}$, the minimum energy needed for the node to
751 stay alive during one round. This value has been computed by multiplying the
752 energy consumed in active state (9.72 mW) by the time in second for one round
753 (3600 seconds). According to the interval of initial energy, a sensor may be
754 alive during at most 20 rounds.
759 \textcolor{green} {To evaluate our approach we consider the performance metrics detailed in~\cite{idrees2015distributed} which are Coverage Ratio, Network Lifetime and Energy Consumption.
760 Compared to the previous definitions, formulations of Coverage Ratio and Energy Consumption are enriched with the index of round $t$.}
764 \item {{\bf Coverage Ratio (CR)}:} the coverage ratio measures how much of the area
765 of a sensor field is covered. In our case, the sensing field is represented as
766 a connected grid of points and we use each grid point as a sample point to
767 compute the coverage. The coverage ratio can be calculated by:
770 \mbox{CR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{$n^t$}}{\mbox{$N$}} \times 100,
772 where $n^t$ is the number of covered grid points by the active sensors of all
773 subregions during round $t$ in the current sensing phase and $N$ is the total number
774 of grid points in the sensing field of the network. In our simulations $N = 51
775 \times 26 = 1326$ grid points.
777 \item{{\bf Number of Active Sensors Ratio (ASR)}:} it is important to have as
778 few active nodes as possible in each round, in order to minimize the
779 communication overhead and maximize the network lifetime. The Active Sensors
780 Ratio is defined as follows:
782 \scriptsize \mbox{ASR}(\%) = \frac{\sum\limits_{r=1}^R
783 \mbox{$A_r^t$}}{\mbox{$|J|$}} \times 100,
785 where $A_r^t$ is the number of active sensors in the subregion $r$ during round
786 $t$ in the current sensing phase, $|J|$ is the total number of sensors in the
787 network, and $R$ is the total number of subregions in the network.
789 \item {{\bf Network Lifetime}:} we define the network lifetime as the time until
790 the coverage ratio drops below a predefined threshold. We denote by
791 $Lifetime_{95}$ (respectively $Lifetime_{50}$) the amount of time during
792 which the network can satisfy an area coverage greater than $95\%$
793 (respectively $50\%$). We assume that the network is alive until all nodes have
794 been drained of their energy or the sensor network becomes
795 disconnected. Network connectivity is important because an active sensor node
796 without connectivity towards a base station cannot transmit information on an
797 event in the area that it monitors.
799 \item {{\bf Energy Consumption (EC)}:} the average energy consumption can be
800 seen as the total energy consumed by the sensors during the $Lifetime_{95}$ or
801 $Lifetime_{50}$ divided by the number of rounds. EC can be computed as
806 \mbox{EC} = \frac{\sum\limits_{m=1}^{M} \left[ \left( E^{\mbox{com}}_m+E^{\mbox{list}}_m+E^{\mbox{comp}}_m \right) +\sum\limits_{t=1}^{T_m} \left( E^{a}_t+E^{s}_t \right) \right]}{\sum\limits_{m=1}^{M} T_m},
809 where $M$ is the number of periods and $T_m$ the number of rounds in a
810 period~$m$, both during $Lifetime_{95}$ or $Lifetime_{50}$. The total energy
811 consumed by the sensors (EC) comes through taking into consideration four main
812 energy factors. The first one , denoted $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{com}}_m$,
813 represents the energy consumption spent by all the nodes for wireless
814 communications during period $m$. $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{list}}_m$, the next
815 factor, corresponds to the energy consumed by the sensors in LISTENING status
816 before receiving the decision to go active or sleep in period $m$.
817 $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{comp}}_m$ refers to the energy needed by all the leader
818 nodes to solve the integer program during a period. Finally, $E^a_t$ and $E^s_t$
819 indicate the energy consumed by the whole network in round $t$.
821 %\item {Network Lifetime:} we have defined the network lifetime as the time until all
822 %nodes have been drained of their energy or each sensor network monitoring an area has become disconnected.
828 \item {{\bf Execution Time}:} a sensor node has limited energy resources and
829 computing power, therefore it is important that the proposed algorithm has the
830 shortest possible execution time. The energy of a sensor node must be mainly
831 used for the sensing phase, not for the pre-sensing ones.
833 \item {{\bf Stopped simulation runs}:} a simulation ends when the sensor network
834 becomes disconnected (some nodes are dead and are not able to send information
835 to the base station). We report the number of simulations that are stopped due
836 to network disconnections and for which round it occurs.
841 \section{Experimental results and analysis}
844 \subsection{Performance analysis for different number of primary points}
845 \label{ch4:sec:04:06}
847 In this section, we study the performance of MuDiLCO-1 approach (with only one round as in~\cite{idrees2015distributed}) for different
848 numbers of primary points. The objective of this comparison is to select the
849 suitable number of primary points to be used by a MuDiLCO protocol. In this
850 comparison, MuDiLCO-1 protocol is used with five primary point models, each
851 model corresponding to a number of primary points, which are called Model-5 (it
852 uses 5 primary points), Model-9, Model-13, Model-17, and Model-21. \textcolor{green}{Note that results presented in~\cite{idrees2015distributed} corresponds to Model-13 (13 primary points)}.
854 \subsubsection{Coverage ratio}
856 Figure~\ref{Figures/ch4/R2/CR} shows the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed
857 nodes. As can be seen, at the beginning the models which use a larger number of
858 primary points provide slightly better coverage ratios, but latter they are the
860 Moreover, when the number of periods increases, the coverage ratio produced by
861 all models decrease due to dead nodes. However, Model-5 is the one with the
862 slowest decrease due to lower numbers of active sensors in the earlier periods.
863 Overall this model is slightly more efficient than the other ones, because it
864 offers a good coverage ratio for a larger number of periods.
867 \includegraphics[scale=0.5] {R2/CR.pdf}
868 \caption{Coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
869 \label{Figures/ch4/R2/CR}
872 \subsubsection{Network lifetime}
874 Finally, we study the effect of increasing the number of primary points on the lifetime of the network.
875 As highlighted by Figures~\ref{Figures/ch4/R2/LT}(a) and
876 \ref{Figures/ch4/R2/LT}(b), the network lifetime obviously increases when the
877 size of the network increases, with Model-5 which leads to the largest lifetime
883 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{R2/LT95.pdf}\\~ ~ ~ ~ ~(a) \\
885 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{R2/LT50.pdf}\\~ ~ ~ ~ ~(b)
887 \caption{Network lifetime for (a) $Lifetime_{95}$ and (b) $Lifetime_{50}$}
888 \label{Figures/ch4/R2/LT}
891 Comparison shows that Model-5, which uses less number of primary points, is the
892 best one because it is less energy consuming during the network lifetime. It is
893 also the better one from the point of view of coverage ratio, as stated
894 before. Therefore, we have chosen the model with five primary points for all the
895 experiments presented thereafter.
897 \subsection{Coverage ratio}
899 Figure~\ref{fig3} shows the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes. We
900 can notice that for the first thirty rounds both DESK and GAF provide a coverage
901 which is a little bit better than the one of MuDiLCO. This is due to the fact
902 that, in comparison with MuDiLCO which uses optimization to put in SLEEP status
903 redundant sensors, more sensor nodes remain active with DESK and GAF. As a
904 consequence, when the number of rounds increases, a larger number of node
905 failures can be observed in DESK and GAF, resulting in a faster decrease of the
906 coverage ratio. Furthermore, our protocol allows to maintain a coverage ratio
907 greater than 50\% for far more rounds. Overall, the proposed sensor activity
908 scheduling based on optimization in MuDiLCO maintains higher coverage ratios of
909 the area of interest for a larger number of rounds. It also means that MuDiLCO
910 saves more energy, with less dead nodes, at most for several rounds, and thus
911 should extend the network lifetime. MuDiLCO-7 seems to have
912 most of the time the best coverage ratio up to round~80, after that MuDiLCO-5 is
917 \includegraphics[scale=0.5] {F/CR.pdf}
918 \caption{Average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
922 \subsection{Active sensors ratio}
924 It is crucial to have as few active nodes as possible in each round, in order to
925 minimize the communication overhead and maximize the network
926 lifetime. Figure~\ref{fig4} presents the active sensor ratio for 150 deployed
927 nodes all along the network lifetime. It appears that up to round thirteen, DESK
928 and GAF have respectively 37.6\% and 44.8\% of nodes in ACTIVE status, whereas
929 MuDiLCO clearly outperforms them with only 24.8\% of active nodes. Obviously,
930 in that case DESK and GAF have less active nodes, since they have activated many
931 nodes at the beginning. Anyway, MuDiLCO activates the available nodes in a more
936 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/ASR.pdf}
937 \caption{Active sensors ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
941 \subsection{Stopped simulation runs}
942 A simulation ends when the sensor network
943 becomes disconnected (some nodes are dead and are not able to send information
944 to the base station). We report the number of simulations that are stopped due
945 to network disconnections and for which round it occurs.
946 Figure~\ref{fig6} reports the cumulative percentage of stopped simulations runs
947 per round for 150 deployed nodes. This figure gives the breakpoint for each
948 method. DESK stops first, after approximately 45~rounds, because it consumes
949 the more energy by turning on a large number of redundant nodes during the
950 sensing phase. GAF stops secondly for the same reason than DESK. Let us
951 emphasize that the simulation continues as long as a network in a subregion is
956 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/SR.pdf}
957 \caption{Cumulative percentage of stopped simulation runs for 150 deployed nodes }
961 \subsection{Energy consumption} \label{subsec:EC}
963 We measure the energy consumed by the sensors during the communication,
964 listening, computation, active, and sleep status for different network densities
965 and compare it with the two other methods. Figures~\ref{fig7}(a)
966 and~\ref{fig7}(b) illustrate the energy consumption, considering different
967 network sizes, for $Lifetime_{95}$ and $Lifetime_{50}$.
972 \parbox{9.5cm}{\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/EC95.pdf}} & (a) \\
974 \parbox{9.5cm}{\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/EC50.pdf}} & (b)
976 \caption{Energy consumption for (a) $Lifetime_{95}$ and
981 The results show that MuDiLCO is the most competitive from the energy
982 consumption point of view. The other approaches have a high energy consumption
983 due to activating a larger number of redundant nodes as well as the energy
984 consumed during the different status of the sensor node.
986 Energy consumption increases with the size of the networks and
987 the number of rounds. The curve Unlimited-MuDiLCO-7 shows that energy
988 consumption due to the time spent to optimally solve the integer program
989 increases drastically with the size of the network. When the resolution time
990 is limited for large network sizes, the energy consumption remains of the same
991 order whatever the MuDiLCO version. As can be seen with MuDiLCO-7.
993 \subsection{Execution time}
995 We observe the impact of the network size and of the number of rounds on the
996 computation time. Figure~\ref{fig77} gives the average execution times in
997 seconds (needed to solve optimization problem) for different values of $T$. The
998 modeling language for Mathematical Programming (AMPL)~\cite{AMPL} is employed to
999 generate the Mixed Integer Linear Program instance in a standard format, which
1000 is then read and solved by the optimization solver GLPK (GNU linear Programming
1001 Kit available in the public domain) \cite{glpk} through a Branch-and-Bound
1002 method. The original execution time is computed on a laptop DELL with Intel
1003 Core~i3~2370~M (2.4 GHz) processor (2 cores) and the MIPS (Million Instructions
1004 Per Second) rate equal to 35330. To be consistent with the use of a sensor node
1005 with Atmels AVR ATmega103L microcontroller (6 MHz) and a MIPS rate equal to 6 to
1006 run the optimization resolution, this time is multiplied by 2944.2 $\left(
1007 \frac{35330}{2} \times \frac{1}{6} \right)$ and reported on Figure~\ref{fig77}
1008 for different network sizes.
1012 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/T.pdf}
1013 \caption{Execution Time (in seconds)}
1017 As expected, the execution time increases with the number of rounds $T$ taken
1018 into account to schedule the sensing phase. Obviously, the
1019 number of variables and constraints of the integer program increases with $T$,
1020 as explained in section~\ref{mom}, the times obtained for $T=1,3$ or
1021 $5$ seem bearable. But for $T=7$, without any limitation of the time, they
1022 become quickly unsuitable for a sensor node, especially when the sensor
1023 network size increases as demonstrated by Unlimited-MuDiLCO-7. Notice that
1024 for 250 nodes, we also limited the execution time for $T=5$, otherwise the
1025 execution time, denoted by Unlimited-MuDiLCO-5, is also above MuDiLCO-7. On the one hand, a large
1026 value for $T$ permits to reduce the energy-overhead due to the three
1027 pre-sensing phases, on the other hand a leader node may waste a considerable
1028 amount of energy to solve the optimization problem. Thus, limiting the time
1029 resolution for large instances allows to reduce the energy consumption without
1030 any impact on the coverage quality.
1032 \subsection{Network lifetime}
1034 The next two figures, Figures~\ref{fig8}(a) and \ref{fig8}(b), illustrate the
1035 network lifetime for different network sizes, respectively for $Lifetime_{95}$
1036 and $Lifetime_{50}$. Both figures show that the network lifetime increases
1037 together with the number of sensor nodes, whatever the protocol, thanks to the
1038 node density which results in more and more redundant nodes that can be
1039 deactivated and thus save energy. Compared to the other approaches, our MuDiLCO
1040 protocol maximizes the lifetime of the network. In particular the gain in
1041 lifetime for a coverage over 95\%, and a network of 250~nodes, is greater than
1042 43\% when switching from GAF to MuDiLCO-5.
1043 %The lower performance that can be observed for MuDiLCO-7 in case
1044 %of $Lifetime_{95}$ with large wireless sensor networks results from the
1045 %difficulty of the optimization problem to be solved by the integer program.
1046 %This point was already noticed in subsection \ref{subsec:EC} devoted to the
1047 %energy consumption, since network lifetime and energy consumption are directly
1049 Overall, it clearly appears that computing a scheduling for
1050 several rounds is possible and relevant, providing that the execution time to
1051 solve the optimization problem for large instances is limited. Notice that
1052 rather than limiting the execution time, similar results might be obtained by
1053 replacing the computation of the exact solution with the finding of a
1054 suboptimal one using a heuristic approach. For our simulation setup and
1055 considering the different metrics, MuDiLCO-5 seems to be the best suited
1056 method compared to MuDiLCO-7.
1061 \parbox{9.5cm}{\includegraphics[scale=0.5125]{F/LT95.pdf}} & (a) \\
1063 \parbox{9.5cm}{\includegraphics[scale=0.5125]{F/LT50.pdf}} & (b)
1065 \caption{Network lifetime for (a) $Lifetime_{95}$ and
1066 (b) $Lifetime_{50}$}
1070 \section{Conclusion and future works}
1071 \label{sec:conclusion}
1073 We have addressed the problem of the coverage and of the lifetime optimization
1074 in wireless sensor networks. This is a key issue as sensor nodes have limited
1075 resources in terms of memory, energy, and computational power. To cope with this
1076 problem, the field of sensing is divided into smaller subregions using the
1077 concept of divide-and-conquer method, and then we propose a protocol which
1078 optimizes coverage and lifetime performances in each subregion. Our protocol,
1079 called MuDiLCO (Multiround Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization) combines
1080 two efficient techniques: network leader election and sensor activity
1081 scheduling. The activity scheduling in each subregion works in periods, where
1082 each period consists of four phases: (i) Information Exchange, (ii) Leader
1083 Election, (iii) Decision Phase to plan the activity of the sensors over $T$
1084 rounds, (iv) Sensing Phase itself divided into $T$ rounds.
1086 Simulations results show the relevance of the proposed protocol in terms of
1087 lifetime, coverage ratio, active sensors ratio, energy consumption, execution
1088 time. Indeed, when dealing with large wireless sensor networks, a distributed
1089 approach, like the one we propose, allows to reduce the difficulty of a single
1090 global optimization problem by partitioning it in many smaller problems, one per
1091 subregion, that can be solved more easily. Furthermore,
1092 results also show that to plan the activity of sensors for large network
1093 sizes, an approach to obtain a near optimal solution is needed. Indeed, an
1094 exact resolution of the resulting optimization problem leads to prohibitive
1095 computation times and thus to an excessive energy consumption.
1097 %In future work, we plan to study and propose adjustable sensing range coverage optimization protocol, which computes all active sensor schedules in one time, by using
1098 %optimization methods. This protocol can prolong the network lifetime by minimizing the number of the active sensor nodes near the borders by optimizing the sensing range of sensor nodes.
1099 % use section* for acknowledgement
1101 \section*{Acknowledgment}
1102 This work is partially funded by the Labex ACTION program (contract ANR-11-LABX-01-01).
1103 As a Ph.D. student, Ali Kadhum IDREES would like to gratefully acknowledge the
1104 University of Babylon - Iraq for the financial support, Campus France (The
1105 French national agency for the promotion of higher education, international
1106 student services, and international mobility).%, and the University ofFranche-Comt\'e - France for all the support in France.
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