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44 \journal{Ad Hoc Networks}
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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, UMR 6174 CNRS, \\ University 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. \textcolor{blue}{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 remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The next section
146 reviews the related works in the field. Section~\ref{pd} is devoted to the
147 description of MuDiLCO protocol. Section~\ref{exp} introduces the experimental
148 framework, it describes the simulation setup and the different metrics used to
149 assess the performances. Section~\ref{analysis} shows the simulation results
150 obtained using the discrete event simulator OMNeT++ \cite{varga}. They fully
151 demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach. Finally, we give
152 concluding remarks and some suggestions for future works in
153 Section~\ref{sec:conclusion}.
155 \section{Related works}
158 \indent This section is dedicated to the various approaches proposed in the
159 literature for the coverage lifetime maximization problem, where the objective
160 is to optimally schedule sensors' activities in order to extend network lifetime
161 in WSNs. Cardei and Wu \cite{cardei2006energy} provide a taxonomy for coverage
162 algorithms in WSNs according to several design choices:
164 \item Sensors scheduling algorithm implementation, i.e. centralized or
165 distributed/localized algorithms.
166 \item The objective of sensor coverage, i.e. to maximize the network lifetime or
167 to minimize the number of active sensors during a sensing round.
168 \item The homogeneous or heterogeneous nature of the nodes, in terms of sensing
169 or communication capabilities.
170 \item The node deployment method, which may be random or deterministic.
171 \item Additional requirements for energy-efficient and connected coverage.
174 The choice of non-disjoint or disjoint cover sets (sensors participate or not in
175 many cover sets) can be added to the above list.
177 \subsection{Centralized approaches}
179 The major approach is to divide/organize the sensors into a suitable number of
180 cover sets where each set completely covers an interest region and to activate
181 these cover sets successively. The centralized algorithms always provide nearly
182 or close to optimal solution since the algorithm has global view of the whole
183 network. Note that centralized algorithms have the advantage of requiring very
184 low processing power from the sensor nodes, which usually have limited
185 processing capabilities. The main drawback of this kind of approach is its
186 higher cost in communications, since the node that will make the decision needs
187 information from all the sensor nodes. \textcolor{blue}{Exact or heuristic
188 approaches are designed to provide cover sets. Contrary to exact methods,
189 heuristic ones can handle very large and centralized problems. They are
190 proposed to reduce computational overhead such as energy consumption, delay,
191 and generally allow to increase the network lifetime.}
193 The first algorithms proposed in the literature consider that the cover sets are
194 disjoint: a sensor node appears in exactly one of the generated cover
195 sets~\cite{abrams2004set,cardei2005improving,Slijepcevic01powerefficient}. In
196 the case of non-disjoint algorithms \cite{pujari2011high}, sensors may
197 participate in more than one cover set. In some cases, this may prolong the
198 lifetime of the network in comparison to the disjoint cover set algorithms, but
199 designing algorithms for non-disjoint cover sets generally induces a higher
200 order of complexity. Moreover, in case of a sensor's failure, non-disjoint
201 scheduling policies are less resilient and reliable because a sensor may be
202 involved in more than one cover sets.
204 In~\cite{yang2014maximum}, the authors have considered a linear programming
205 approach to select the minimum number of working sensor nodes, in order to
206 preserve a maximum coverage and to extend lifetime of the network. Cheng et
207 al.~\cite{cheng2014energy} have defined a heuristic algorithm called Cover Sets
208 Balance (CSB), which chooses a set of active nodes using the tuple (data
209 coverage range, residual energy). Then, they have introduced a new Correlated
210 Node Set Computing (CNSC) algorithm to find the correlated node set for a given
211 node. After that, they proposed a High Residual Energy First (HREF) node
212 selection algorithm to minimize the number of active nodes so as to prolong the
213 network lifetime. Various centralized methods based on column generation
214 approaches have also been
215 proposed~\cite{gentili2013,castano2013column,rossi2012exact,deschinkel2012column}.
216 \textcolor{blue}{In~\cite{gentili2013}, authors highlight the trade-off between
217 the network lifetime and the coverage percentage. They show that network
218 lifetime can be hugely improved by decreasing the coverage ratio.}
220 \subsection{Distributed approaches}
222 In distributed and localized coverage algorithms, the required computation to
223 schedule the activity of sensor nodes will be done by the cooperation among
224 neighboring nodes. These algorithms may require more computation power for the
225 processing by the cooperating sensor nodes, but they are more scalable for large
226 WSNs. Localized and distributed algorithms generally result in non-disjoint set
229 Many distributed algorithms have been developed to perform the scheduling so as
230 to preserve coverage, see for example
231 \cite{Gallais06,Tian02,Ye03,Zhang05,HeinzelmanCB02, yardibi2010distributed,
232 prasad2007distributed,Misra}. Distributed algorithms typically operate in
233 rounds for a predetermined duration. At the beginning of each round, a sensor
234 exchanges information with its neighbors and makes a decision to either remain
235 turned on or to go to sleep for the round. This decision is basically made on
236 simple greedy criteria like the largest uncovered area
237 \cite{Berman05efficientenergy} or maximum uncovered targets
238 \cite{lu2003coverage}. The Distributed Adaptive Sleep Scheduling Algorithm
239 (DASSA) \cite{yardibi2010distributed} does not require location information of
240 sensors while maintaining connectivity and satisfying a user defined coverage
241 target. In DASSA, nodes use the residual energy levels and feedback from the
242 sink for scheduling the activity of their neighbors. This feedback mechanism
243 reduces the randomness in scheduling that would otherwise occur due to the
244 absence of location information. In \cite{ChinhVu}, the author have designed a
245 novel distributed heuristic, called Distributed Energy-efficient Scheduling for
246 k-coverage (DESK), which ensures that the energy consumption among the sensors
247 is balanced and the lifetime maximized while the coverage requirement is
248 maintained. This heuristic works in rounds, requires only one-hop neighbor
249 information, and each sensor decides its status (active or sleep) based on the
250 perimeter coverage model from~\cite{Huang:2003:CPW:941350.941367}.
252 The works presented in \cite{Bang, Zhixin, Zhang} focus on coverage-aware,
253 distributed energy-efficient, and distributed clustering methods respectively,
254 which aim at extending the network lifetime, while the coverage is ensured.
255 More recently, Shibo et al. \cite{Shibo} have expressed the coverage problem as
256 a minimum weight submodular set cover problem and proposed a Distributed
257 Truncated Greedy Algorithm (DTGA) to solve it. They take advantage from both
258 temporal and spatial correlations between data sensed by different sensors, and
259 leverage prediction, to improve the lifetime. In \cite{xu2001geography}, Xu et
260 al. have described an algorithm, called Geographical Adaptive Fidelity (GAF),
261 which uses geographic location information to divide the area of interest into
262 fixed square grids. Within each grid, it keeps only one node staying awake to
263 take the responsibility of sensing and communication.
265 Some other approaches (outside the scope of our work) do not consider a
266 synchronized and predetermined time-slot where the sensors are active or not.
267 Indeed, each sensor maintains its own timer and its wake-up time is randomized
268 \cite{Ye03} or regulated \cite{cardei2005maximum} over time.
270 The MuDiLCO protocol (for Multiround Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization
271 protocol) presented in this paper is an extension of the approach introduced
272 in~\cite{idrees2014coverage}. In~\cite{idrees2014coverage}, the protocol is
273 deployed over only two subregions. Simulation results have shown that it was
274 more interesting to divide the area into several subregions, given the
275 computation complexity. Compared to our previous paper, in this one we study the
276 possibility of dividing the sensing phase into multiple rounds and we also add
277 an improved model of energy consumption to assess the efficiency of our
278 approach. In fact, in this paper we make a multiround optimization, while it was
279 a single round optimization in our previous work. \textcolor{blue}{The idea is
280 to take advantage of the pre-sensing phase to plan the sensor's activity for
281 several rounds instead of one, thus saving energy. In addition, when the
282 optimization problem becomes more complex, its resolution is stopped after a
283 given time threshold}.
286 \section{MuDiLCO protocol description}
289 \subsection{Assumptions}
291 We consider a randomly and uniformly deployed network consisting of static
292 wireless sensors. The sensors are deployed in high density to ensure initially
293 a high coverage ratio of the interested area. We assume that all nodes are
294 homogeneous in terms of communication and processing capabilities, and
295 heterogeneous from the point of view of energy provision. Each sensor is
296 supposed to get information on its location either through hardware such as
297 embedded GPS or through location discovery algorithms.
299 To model a sensor node's coverage area, we consider the boolean disk coverage
300 model which is the most widely used sensor coverage model in the
301 literature. Thus, each sensor has a constant sensing range $R_s$ and all space
302 points within the disk centered at the sensor with the radius of the sensing
303 range is said to be covered by this sensor. We also assume that the
304 communication range satisfies $R_c \geq 2R_s$. In fact, Zhang and
305 Zhou~\cite{Zhang05} proved that if the transmission range fulfills the previous
306 hypothesis, a complete coverage of a convex area implies connectivity among the
309 \indent Instead of working with the coverage area, we consider for each sensor a
310 set of points called primary points~\cite{idrees2014coverage}. We assume that
311 the sensing disk defined by a sensor is covered if all the primary points of
312 this sensor are covered. By knowing the position of wireless sensor node
313 (centered at the the position $\left(p_x,p_y\right)$) and it's sensing range
314 $R_s$, we define up to 25 primary points $X_1$ to $X_{25}$ as decribed on
315 Figure~\ref{fig1}. The optimal number of primary points is investigated in
316 section~\ref{ch4:sec:04:06}.
318 The coordinates of the primary points are defined as follows:\\
319 %$(p_x,p_y)$ = point center of wireless sensor node\\
321 $X_2=( p_x + R_s * (1), p_y + R_s * (0) )$\\
322 $X_3=( p_x + R_s * (-1), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
323 $X_4=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (1) )$\\
324 $X_5=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (-1 )) $\\
325 $X_6=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
326 $X_7=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
327 $X_8=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
328 $X_9=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
329 $X_{10}= ( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
330 $X_{11}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0))$\\
331 $X_{12}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
332 $X_{13}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
333 $X_{14}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{1}{2})) $\\
334 $X_{15}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{1}{2})) $\\
335 $X_{16}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{- 1}{2})) $\\
336 $X_{17}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{- 1}{2})) $\\
337 $X_{18}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
338 $X_{19}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
339 $X_{20}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{1}{2})) $\\
340 $X_{21}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (-\frac{1}{2})) $\\
341 $X_{22}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{1}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2})) $\\
342 $X_{23}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{- 1}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2})) $\\
343 $X_{24}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{- 1}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2})) $\\
344 $X_{25}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{1}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{3}}{2})) $.
348 \includegraphics[scale=0.375]{fig26.pdf}
350 \caption{Wireless sensor node represented by up to 25~primary points}
353 \subsection{Background idea}
355 \textcolor{blue}{The WSN area of interest is, at first, divided into
356 regular homogeneous subregions using a divide-and-conquer algorithm. Then, our protocol will be executed in a distributed way in each
357 subregion simultaneously to schedule nodes' activities for one sensing
358 period. Sensor nodes are assumed to be deployed almost uniformly and with high
359 density over the region. The regular subdivision is made so that the number
360 of hops between any pairs of sensors inside a subregion is less than or equal
363 As can be seen in Figure~\ref{fig2}, our protocol works in periods fashion,
364 where each period is divided into 4~phases: Information~Exchange,
365 Leader~Election, Decision, and Sensing. Each sensing phase may be itself
366 divided into $T$ rounds \textcolor{blue} {of equal duration} and for each round
367 a set of sensors (a cover set) is responsible for the sensing task. In this way
368 a multiround optimization process is performed during each period after
369 Information~Exchange and Leader~Election phases, in order to produce $T$ cover
370 sets that will take the mission of sensing for $T$ rounds.
372 \centering \includegraphics[width=125mm]{Modelgeneral.pdf} % 70mm
373 \caption{The MuDiLCO protocol scheme executed on each node}
377 This protocol minimizes the impact of unexpected node failure (not due to
378 batteries running out of energy), because it works in periods.
379 On the one hand, if a node failure is detected before making the decision, the
380 node will not participate to this phase, and, on the other hand, if the node
381 failure occurs after the decision, the sensing task of the network will be
382 temporarily affected: only during the period of sensing until a new period
383 starts. \textcolor{blue}{The duration of the rounds is a predefined
384 parameter. Round duration should be long enough to hide the system control
385 overhead and short enough to minimize the negative effects in case of node
388 The energy consumption and some other constraints can easily be taken into
389 account, since the sensors can update and then exchange their information
390 (including their residual energy) at the beginning of each period. However, the
391 pre-sensing phases (Information Exchange, Leader Election, and Decision) are
392 energy consuming for some nodes, even when they do not join the network to
395 We define two types of packets that will be used by the proposed protocol:
396 \begin{enumerate}[(a)]
397 \item INFO packet: such a packet will be sent by each sensor node to all the
398 nodes inside a subregion for information exchange.
399 \item Active-Sleep packet: sent by the leader to all the nodes inside a
400 subregion to inform them to remain Active or to go Sleep during the sensing
404 There are five status for each sensor node in the network:
405 \begin{enumerate}[(a)]
406 \item LISTENING: sensor node is waiting for a decision (to be active or not);
407 \item COMPUTATION: sensor node has been elected as leader and applies the
408 optimization process;
409 \item ACTIVE: sensor node is taking part in the monitoring of the area;
410 \item SLEEP: sensor node is turned off to save energy;
411 \item COMMUNICATION: sensor node is transmitting or receiving packet.
414 Below, we describe each phase in more details.
416 \subsection{Information Exchange Phase}
418 Each sensor node $j$ sends its position, remaining energy $RE_j$, and the number
419 of neighbors $NBR_j$ to all wireless sensor nodes in its subregion by using an
420 INFO packet (containing information on position coordinates, current remaining
421 energy, sensor node ID, number of its one-hop live neighbors) and then waits for
422 packets sent by other nodes. After that, each node will have information about
423 all the sensor nodes in the subregion. In our model, the remaining energy
424 corresponds to the time that a sensor can live in the active mode.
426 \subsection{Leader Election phase}
428 This step consists in choosing the Wireless Sensor Node Leader (WSNL), which
429 will be responsible for executing the coverage algorithm. Each subregion in the
430 area of interest will select its own WSNL independently for each period. All
431 the sensor nodes cooperate to elect a WSNL. The nodes in the same subregion
432 will select the leader based on the received information from all other nodes in
433 the same subregion. The selection criteria are, in order of importance: larger
434 number of neighbors, larger remaining energy, and then in case of equality,
435 larger index. Observations on previous simulations suggest to use the number of
436 one-hop neighbors as the primary criterion to reduce energy consumption due to
439 \subsection{Decision phase}
441 Each WSNL will \textcolor{blue}{solve an integer program to select which cover
442 sets will be activated in the following sensing phase to cover the subregion
443 to which it belongs. $T$ cover sets will be produced, one for each round. The
444 WSNL will send an Active-Sleep packet to each sensor in the subregion based on
445 the algorithm's results, indicating if the sensor should be active or not in
446 each round of the sensing phase.}
448 As shown in Algorithm~\ref{alg:MuDiLCO}, the leader will execute an optimization
449 algorithm based on an integer program. The integer program is based on the model
450 proposed by \cite{pedraza2006} with some modifications, where the objective is
451 to find a maximum number of disjoint cover sets. To fulfill this goal, the
452 authors proposed an integer program which forces undercoverage and overcoverage
453 of targets to become minimal at the same time. They use binary variables
454 $x_{jl}$ to indicate if sensor $j$ belongs to cover set $l$. In our model, we
455 consider binary variables $X_{t,j}$ to determine the possibility of activating
456 sensor $j$ during round $t$ of a given sensing phase. We also consider primary
457 points as targets. The set of primary points is denoted by $P$ and the set of
458 sensors by $J$. Only sensors able to be alive during at least one round are
459 involved in the integer program.
461 For a primary point $p$, let $\alpha_{j,p}$ denote the indicator function of
462 whether the point $p$ is covered, that is:
464 \alpha_{j,p} = \left \{
466 1 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$ is covered} \\
467 & \mbox{by sensor node $j$}, \\
468 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
472 The number of active sensors that cover the primary point $p$ during
473 round $t$ is equal to $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{j,p} * X_{t,j}$ where:
477 1& \mbox{if sensor $j$ is active during round $t$,} \\
478 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
482 We define the Overcoverage variable $\Theta_{t,p}$ as:
484 \Theta_{t,p} = \left \{
486 0 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$}\\
487 & \mbox{is not covered during round $t$,}\\
488 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{tj} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
492 More precisely, $\Theta_{t,p}$ represents the number of active sensor nodes
493 minus one that cover the primary point $p$ during round $t$. The
494 Undercoverage variable $U_{t,p}$ of the primary point $p$ during round $t$ is
499 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered during round $t$,} \\
500 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
505 Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows:
507 \min \sum_{t=1}^{T} \sum_{p=1}^{|P|} \left(W_{\theta}* \Theta_{t,p} + W_{U} * U_{t,p} \right) \label{eq15}
512 \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
516 \sum_{t=1}^{T} X_{t,j} \leq \floor*{RE_{j}/E_{R}} \hspace{10 mm}\forall j \in J\hspace{6 mm}
521 X_{t,j} \in \lbrace0,1\rbrace, \hspace{10 mm} \forall j \in J, t = 1,\dots,T \label{eq17}
525 U_{t,p} \in \lbrace0,1\rbrace, \hspace{10 mm}\forall p \in P, t = 1,\dots,T \label{eq18}
529 \Theta_{t,p} \geq 0 \hspace{10 mm}\forall p \in P, t = 1,\dots,T \label{eq178}
533 \item $X_{t,j}$: indicates whether or not the sensor $j$ is actively sensing
534 during round $t$ (1 if yes and 0 if not);
535 \item $\Theta_{t,p}$ - {\it overcoverage}: the number of sensors minus one that
536 are covering the primary point $p$ during round $t$;
537 \item $U_{t,p}$ - {\it undercoverage}: indicates whether or not the primary
538 point $p$ is being covered during round $t$ (1 if not covered and 0 if
542 The first group of constraints indicates that some primary point $p$ should be
543 covered by at least one sensor and, if it is not always the case, overcoverage
544 and undercoverage variables help balancing the restriction equations by taking
545 positive values. The constraint given by equation~(\ref{eq144}) guarantees that
546 the sensor has enough energy ($RE_j$ corresponds to its remaining energy) to be
547 alive during the selected rounds knowing that $E_{R}$ is the amount of energy
548 required to be alive during one round.
550 There are two main objectives. First, we limit the overcoverage of primary
551 points in order to activate a minimum number of sensors. Second we prevent the
552 absence of monitoring on some parts of the subregion by minimizing the
553 undercoverage. The weights $W_\theta$ and $W_U$ must be properly chosen so as
554 to guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each round.
555 In our simulations, priority is given to the coverage by choosing $W_{U}$ very
556 large compared to $W_{\theta}$.
558 \textcolor{blue}{The size of the problem depends on the number of variables and
559 constraints. The number of variables is linked to the number of alive sensors
560 $A \subseteq J$, the number of rounds $T$, and the number of primary points
561 $P$. Thus the integer program contains $A*T$ variables of type $X_{t,j}$,
562 $P*T$ overcoverage variables and $P*T$ undercoverage variables. The number of
563 constraints is equal to $P*T$ (for constraints (\ref{eq16})) $+$ $A$ (for
564 constraints (\ref{eq144})).}
566 \subsection{Sensing phase}
568 The sensing phase consists of $T$ rounds. Each sensor node in the subregion will
569 receive an Active-Sleep packet from WSNL, informing it to stay awake or to go to
570 sleep for each round of the sensing phase. Algorithm~\ref{alg:MuDiLCO}, which
571 will be executed by each sensor node~$s_j$ at the beginning of a period,
572 explains how the Active-Sleep packet is obtained.
574 \begin{algorithm}[h!]
576 \If{ $RE_j \geq E_{R}$ }{
577 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
578 \emph{Send $INFO()$ packet to other nodes in the subregion}\;
579 \emph{Wait $INFO()$ packet from other nodes in the subregion}\;
581 \emph{LeaderID = Leader election}\;
582 \If{$ s_j.ID = LeaderID $}{
583 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMPUTATION}\;
584 \emph{$\left\{\left(X_{1,k},\dots,X_{T,k}\right)\right\}_{k \in J}$ =
585 Execute Integer Program Algorithm($T,J$)}\;
586 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
587 \emph{Send $ActiveSleep()$ packet to each node $k$ in subregion: a packet \\
588 with vector of activity scheduling $(X_{1,k},\dots,X_{T,k})$}\;
589 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
592 \emph{$s_j.status$ = LISTENING}\;
593 \emph{Wait $ActiveSleep()$ packet from the Leader}\;
594 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
597 \Else { Exclude $s_j$ from entering in the current sensing phase}
599 \caption{MuDiLCO($s_j$)}
604 \section{Experimental framework}
607 \subsection{Simulation setup}
609 We conducted a series of simulations to evaluate the efficiency and the
610 relevance of our approach, using the discrete event simulator OMNeT++
611 \cite{varga}. The simulation parameters are summarized in Table~\ref{table3}.
612 Each experiment for a network is run over 25~different random topologies and the
613 results presented hereafter are the average of these 25 runs.
614 We performed simulations for five different densities varying from 50 to
615 250~nodes deployed over a $50 \times 25~m^2 $ sensing field. More precisely,
616 the deployment is controlled at a coarse scale in order to ensure that the
617 deployed nodes can cover the sensing field with the given sensing range.
620 \caption{Relevant parameters for network initializing.}
624 Parameter & Value \\ [0.5ex]
626 Sensing field size & $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ \\
627 Network size & 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250~nodes \\
628 Initial energy & 500-700~joules \\
629 Sensing time for one round & 60 Minutes \\
630 $E_{R}$ & 36 Joules\\
638 \textcolor{blue}{Our protocol is declined into four versions: MuDiLCO-1,
639 MuDiLCO-3, MuDiLCO-5, and MuDiLCO-7, corresponding respectively to $T=1,3,5,7$
640 ($T$ the number of rounds in one sensing period). Since the time resolution
641 may be prohibitive when the size of the problem increases, a time limit
642 threshold has been fixed when solving large instances. In these cases, the
643 solver returns the best solution found, which is not necessary the optimal
644 one. In practice, we only set time limit values for $T=5$ and $T=7$. In fact,
645 for $T=5$ we limited the time for 250~nodes, whereas for $T=7$ it was for the
646 three largest network sizes. Therefore we used the following values (in
647 second): 0.03 for 250~nodes when $T=5$, while for $T=7$ we chose 0.03, 0.06,
648 and 0.08 for respectively 150, 200, and 250~nodes.
649 These time limit thresholds have been set empirically. The basic idea consists
650 in considering the average execution time to solve the integer programs to
651 optimality, then in dividing this average time by three to set the threshold
652 value. After that, this threshold value is increased if necessary so that
653 the solver is able to deliver a feasible solution within the time limit. In
654 fact, selecting the optimal values for the time limits will be investigated in
657 In the following, we will make comparisons with two other methods. The first
658 method, called DESK and proposed by \cite{ChinhVu}, is a full distributed
659 coverage algorithm. The second method, called GAF~\cite{xu2001geography},
660 consists in dividing the region into fixed squares. During the decision phase,
661 in each square, one sensor is then chosen to remain active during the sensing
664 Some preliminary experiments were performed to study the choice of the number of
665 subregions which subdivides the sensing field, considering different network
666 sizes. They show that as the number of subregions increases, so does the network
667 lifetime. Moreover, it makes the MuDiLCO protocol more robust against random
668 network disconnection due to node failures. However, too many subdivisions
669 reduce the advantage of the optimization. In fact, there is a balance between
670 the benefit from the optimization and the execution time needed to solve
671 it. In the following we have set the number of subregions to 16.
673 \subsection{Energy model}
675 We use an energy consumption model proposed by~\cite{ChinhVu} and based on
676 \cite{raghunathan2002energy} with slight modifications. The energy consumption
677 for sending/receiving the packets is added, whereas the part related to the
678 sensing range is removed because we consider a fixed sensing range.
680 For our energy consumption model, we refer to the sensor node Medusa~II which
681 uses an Atmels AVR ATmega103L microcontroller~\cite{raghunathan2002energy}. The
682 typical architecture of a sensor is composed of four subsystems: the MCU
683 subsystem which is capable of computation, communication subsystem (radio) which
684 is responsible for transmitting/receiving messages, the sensing subsystem that
685 collects data, and the power supply which powers the complete sensor node
686 \cite{raghunathan2002energy}. Each of the first three subsystems can be turned
687 on or off depending on the current status of the sensor. Energy consumption
688 (expressed in milliWatt per second) for the different status of the sensor is
689 summarized in Table~\ref{table4}.
692 \caption{The Energy Consumption Model}
694 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}
696 Sensor status & MCU & Radio & Sensing & Power (mW) \\ [0.5ex]
698 LISTENING & on & on & on & 20.05 \\
700 ACTIVE & on & off & on & 9.72 \\
702 SLEEP & off & off & off & 0.02 \\
704 COMPUTATION & on & on & on & 26.83 \\
711 For the sake of simplicity we ignore the energy needed to turn on the radio, to
712 start up the sensor node, to move from one status to another, etc.
713 Thus, when a sensor becomes active (i.e., it has already chosen its status), it
714 can turn its radio off to save battery. MuDiLCO uses two types of packets for
715 communication. The size of the INFO packet and Active-Sleep packet are 112~bits
716 and 24~bits respectively. The value of energy spent to send a 1-bit-content
717 message is obtained by using the equation in ~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} to
718 calculate the energy cost for transmitting messages and we propose the same
719 value for receiving the packets. The energy needed to send or receive a 1-bit
720 packet is equal to 0.2575~mW.
722 The initial energy of each node is randomly set in the interval $[500;700]$. A
723 sensor node will not participate in the next round if its remaining energy is
724 less than $E_{R}=36~\mbox{Joules}$, the minimum energy needed for the node to
725 stay alive during one round. This value has been computed by multiplying the
726 energy consumed in active state (9.72 mW) by the time in second for one round
727 (3600 seconds). According to the interval of initial energy, a sensor may be
728 alive during at most 20 rounds.
732 To evaluate our approach we consider the following performance metrics:
736 \item {{\bf Coverage Ratio (CR)}:} the coverage ratio measures how much of the area
737 of a sensor field is covered. In our case, the sensing field is represented as
738 a connected grid of points and we use each grid point as a sample point to
739 compute the coverage. The coverage ratio can be calculated by:
742 \mbox{CR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{$n^t$}}{\mbox{$N$}} \times 100,
744 where $n^t$ is the number of covered grid points by the active sensors of all
745 subregions during round $t$ in the current sensing phase and $N$ is the total number
746 of grid points in the sensing field of the network. In our simulations $N = 51
747 \times 26 = 1326$ grid points.
749 \item{{\bf Number of Active Sensors Ratio (ASR)}:} it is important to have as
750 few active nodes as possible in each round, in order to minimize the
751 communication overhead and maximize the network lifetime. The Active Sensors
752 Ratio is defined as follows:
754 \scriptsize \mbox{ASR}(\%) = \frac{\sum\limits_{r=1}^R
755 \mbox{$A_r^t$}}{\mbox{$|J|$}} \times 100,
757 where $A_r^t$ is the number of active sensors in the subregion $r$ during round
758 $t$ in the current sensing phase, $|J|$ is the total number of sensors in the
759 network, and $R$ is the total number of subregions in the network.
761 \item {{\bf Network Lifetime}:} we define the network lifetime as the time until
762 the coverage ratio drops below a predefined threshold. We denote by
763 $Lifetime_{95}$ (respectively $Lifetime_{50}$) the amount of time during
764 which the network can satisfy an area coverage greater than $95\%$
765 (respectively $50\%$). We assume that the network is alive until all nodes have
766 been drained of their energy or the sensor network becomes
767 disconnected. Network connectivity is important because an active sensor node
768 without connectivity towards a base station cannot transmit information on an
769 event in the area that it monitors.
771 \item {{\bf Energy Consumption (EC)}:} the average energy consumption can be
772 seen as the total energy consumed by the sensors during the $Lifetime_{95}$ or
773 $Lifetime_{50}$ divided by the number of rounds. EC can be computed as
778 \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},
781 where $M$ is the number of periods and $T_m$ the number of rounds in a
782 period~$m$, both during $Lifetime_{95}$ or $Lifetime_{50}$. The total energy
783 consumed by the sensors (EC) comes through taking into consideration four main
784 energy factors. The first one , denoted $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{com}}_m$,
785 represents the energy consumption spent by all the nodes for wireless
786 communications during period $m$. $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{list}}_m$, the next
787 factor, corresponds to the energy consumed by the sensors in LISTENING status
788 before receiving the decision to go active or sleep in period $m$.
789 $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{comp}}_m$ refers to the energy needed by all the leader
790 nodes to solve the integer program during a period. Finally, $E^a_t$ and $E^s_t$
791 indicate the energy consumed by the whole network in round $t$.
793 %\item {Network Lifetime:} we have defined the network lifetime as the time until all
794 %nodes have been drained of their energy or each sensor network monitoring an area has become disconnected.
796 \item {{\bf Execution Time}:} a sensor node has limited energy resources and
797 computing power, therefore it is important that the proposed algorithm has the
798 shortest possible execution time. The energy of a sensor node must be mainly
799 used for the sensing phase, not for the pre-sensing ones.
801 \item {{\bf Stopped simulation runs}:} a simulation ends when the sensor network
802 becomes disconnected (some nodes are dead and are not able to send information
803 to the base station). We report the number of simulations that are stopped due
804 to network disconnections and for which round it occurs.
808 \section{Experimental results and analysis}
811 \subsection{Performance analysis for different number of primary points}
812 \label{ch4:sec:04:06}
814 In this section, we study the performance of MuDiLCO-1 approach for different
815 numbers of primary points. The objective of this comparison is to select the
816 suitable number of primary points to be used by a MuDiLCO protocol. In this
817 comparison, MuDiLCO-1 protocol is used with five primary point models, each
818 model corresponding to a number of primary points, which are called Model-5 (it
819 uses 5 primary points), Model-9, Model-13, Model-17, and Model-21.
821 \subsubsection{Coverage ratio}
823 Figure~\ref{Figures/ch4/R2/CR} shows the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed
824 nodes. As can be seen, at the beginning the models which use a larger number of
825 primary points provide slightly better coverage ratios, but latter they are the
827 Moreover, when the number of periods increases, the coverage ratio produced by
828 all models decrease due to dead nodes. However, Model-5 is the one with the
829 slowest decrease due to lower numbers of active sensors in the earlier periods.
830 Overall this model is slightly more efficient than the other ones, because it
831 offers a good coverage ratio for a larger number of periods.
834 \includegraphics[scale=0.5] {R2/CR.pdf}
835 \caption{Coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
836 \label{Figures/ch4/R2/CR}
839 \subsubsection{Network lifetime}
841 Finally, we study the effect of increasing the number of primary points on the lifetime of the network.
842 As highlighted by Figures~\ref{Figures/ch4/R2/LT}(a) and
843 \ref{Figures/ch4/R2/LT}(b), the network lifetime obviously increases when the
844 size of the network increases, with Model-5 which leads to the largest lifetime
850 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{R2/LT95.pdf}\\~ ~ ~ ~ ~(a) \\
852 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{R2/LT50.pdf}\\~ ~ ~ ~ ~(b)
854 \caption{Network lifetime for (a) $Lifetime_{95}$ and (b) $Lifetime_{50}$}
855 \label{Figures/ch4/R2/LT}
858 Comparison shows that Model-5, which uses less number of primary points, is the
859 best one because it is less energy consuming during the network lifetime. It is
860 also the better one from the point of view of coverage ratio, as stated
861 before. Therefore, we have chosen the model with five primary points for all the
862 experiments presented thereafter.
864 \subsection{Coverage ratio}
866 Figure~\ref{fig3} shows the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes. We
867 can notice that for the first thirty rounds both DESK and GAF provide a coverage
868 which is a little bit better than the one of MuDiLCO. This is due to the fact
869 that, in comparison with MuDiLCO which uses optimization to put in SLEEP status
870 redundant sensors, more sensor nodes remain active with DESK and GAF. As a
871 consequence, when the number of rounds increases, a larger number of node
872 failures can be observed in DESK and GAF, resulting in a faster decrease of the
873 coverage ratio. Furthermore, our protocol allows to maintain a coverage ratio
874 greater than 50\% for far more rounds. Overall, the proposed sensor activity
875 scheduling based on optimization in MuDiLCO maintains higher coverage ratios of
876 the area of interest for a larger number of rounds. It also means that MuDiLCO
877 saves more energy, with less dead nodes, at most for several rounds, and thus
878 should extend the network lifetime. \textcolor{blue}{MuDiLCO-7 seems to have
879 most of the time the best coverage ratio up to round~80, after MuDiLCO-5 is
884 \includegraphics[scale=0.5] {F/CR.pdf}
885 \caption{Average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
889 \subsection{Active sensors ratio}
891 It is crucial to have as few active nodes as possible in each round, in order to
892 minimize the communication overhead and maximize the network
893 lifetime. Figure~\ref{fig4} presents the active sensor ratio for 150 deployed
894 nodes all along the network lifetime. It appears that up to round thirteen, DESK
895 and GAF have respectively 37.6\% and 44.8\% of nodes in ACTIVE status, whereas
896 MuDiLCO clearly outperforms them with only 24.8\% of active nodes. Obviously,
897 in that case DESK and GAF have less active nodes, since they have activated many
898 nodes at the beginning. Anyway, MuDiLCO activates the available nodes in a more
903 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/ASR.pdf}
904 \caption{Active sensors ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
908 \subsection{Stopped simulation runs}
910 Figure~\ref{fig6} reports the cumulative percentage of stopped simulations runs
911 per round for 150 deployed nodes. This figure gives the breakpoint for each
912 method. DESK stops first, after approximately 45~rounds, because it consumes
913 the more energy by turning on a large number of redundant nodes during the
914 sensing phase. GAF stops secondly for the same reason than DESK. Let us
915 emphasize that the simulation continues as long as a network in a subregion is
920 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/SR.pdf}
921 \caption{Cumulative percentage of stopped simulation runs for 150 deployed nodes }
925 \subsection{Energy consumption} \label{subsec:EC}
927 We measure the energy consumed by the sensors during the communication,
928 listening, computation, active, and sleep status for different network densities
929 and compare it with the two other methods. Figures~\ref{fig7}(a)
930 and~\ref{fig7}(b) illustrate the energy consumption, considering different
931 network sizes, for $Lifetime_{95}$ and $Lifetime_{50}$.
936 \parbox{9.5cm}{\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/EC95.pdf}} & (a) \\
938 \parbox{9.5cm}{\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/EC50.pdf}} & (b)
940 \caption{Energy consumption for (a) $Lifetime_{95}$ and
945 The results show that MuDiLCO is the most competitive from the energy
946 consumption point of view. The other approaches have a high energy consumption
947 due to activating a larger number of redundant nodes as well as the energy
948 consumed during the different status of the sensor node.
951 \textcolor{blue}{Energy consumption increases with the size of the networks and
952 the number of rounds. The curve Unlimited-MuDiLCO-7 shows that energy
953 consumption due to the time spent to solve the integer program to optimality
954 increases drastically with the size of the network. When the resolution time
955 is limited for large network sizes, the energy consumption remains of the same
956 order whatever the MuDiLCO version.}
959 \subsection{Execution time}
961 We observe the impact of the network size and of the number of rounds on the
962 computation time. Figure~\ref{fig77} gives the average execution times in
963 seconds (needed to solve optimization problem) for different values of $T$. The modeling language for Mathematical Programming (AMPL)~\cite{AMPL} is employed to generate the Mixed Integer Linear Program instance in a standard format, which is then read and solved by the optimization solver GLPK (GNU linear Programming Kit available in the public domain) \cite{glpk} through a Branch-and-Bound method. The
964 original execution time is computed on a laptop DELL with Intel Core~i3~2370~M
965 (2.4 GHz) processor (2 cores) and the MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second)
966 rate equal to 35330. To be consistent with the use of a sensor node with Atmels
967 AVR ATmega103L microcontroller (6 MHz) and a MIPS rate equal to 6 to run the
968 optimization resolution, this time is multiplied by 2944.2 $\left(
969 \frac{35330}{2} \times \frac{1}{6} \right)$ and reported on Figure~\ref{fig77}
970 for different network sizes.
974 \includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/T.pdf}
975 \caption{Execution Time (in seconds)}
979 As expected, the execution time increases with the number of rounds $T$ taken
980 into account to schedule the sensing phase. The times obtained for $T=1,3$
981 or $5$ seem bearable, but for $T=7$ they become quickly unsuitable for a sensor
982 node, especially when the sensor network size increases. Again, we can notice
983 that if we want to schedule the nodes activities for a large number of rounds,
984 we need to choose a relevant number of subregions in order to avoid a complicated
985 and cumbersome optimization. On the one hand, a large value for $T$ permits to
986 reduce the energy-overhead due to the three pre-sensing phases, on the other
987 hand a leader node may waste a considerable amount of energy to solve the
988 optimization problem.
990 %While MuDiLCO-1, 3, and 5 solves the optimization process with suitable execution times to be used on wireless sensor network because it distributed on larger number of small subregions as well as it is used acceptable number of round(s) T. We think that in distributed fashion the solving of the optimization problem to produce T rounds in a subregion can be tackled by sensor nodes. Overall, to be able to deal with very large networks, a distributed method is clearly required.
992 \subsection{Network lifetime}
994 The next two figures, Figures~\ref{fig8}(a) and \ref{fig8}(b), illustrate the
995 network lifetime for different network sizes, respectively for $Lifetime_{95}$
996 and $Lifetime_{50}$. Both figures show that the network lifetime increases
997 together with the number of sensor nodes, whatever the protocol, thanks to the
998 node density which results in more and more redundant nodes that can be
999 deactivated and thus save energy. Compared to the other approaches, our MuDiLCO
1000 protocol maximizes the lifetime of the network. In particular the gain in
1001 lifetime for a coverage over 95\% is greater than 38\% when switching from GAF
1002 to MuDiLCO-3. The slight decrease that can be observed for MuDiLCO-7 in case
1003 of $Lifetime_{95}$ with large wireless sensor networks results from the
1004 difficulty of the optimization problem to be solved by the integer program.
1005 This point was already noticed in subsection \ref{subsec:EC} devoted to the
1006 energy consumption, since network lifetime and energy consumption are directly
1008 %\textcolor{red}{As can be seen in these figures, the lifetime increases with the size of the network, and it is clearly largest for the MuDiLCO
1009 %and the GA-MuDiLCO protocols. GA-MuDiLCO prolongs the network lifetime obviously in comparison with both DESK and GAF, as well as the MuDiLCO-7 version for $lifetime_{95}$. However, comparison shows that MuDiLCO protocol and GA-MuDiLCO protocol, which use distributed optimization over the subregions are the best ones because they are robust to network disconnection during the network lifetime as well as they consume less energy in comparison with other approaches.}
1013 \parbox{9.5cm}{\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/LT95.pdf}} & (a) \\
1015 \parbox{9.5cm}{\includegraphics[scale=0.5]{F/LT50.pdf}} & (b)
1017 \caption{Network lifetime for (a) $Lifetime_{95}$ and
1018 (b) $Lifetime_{50}$}
1022 % By choosing the best suited nodes, for each round, by optimizing the coverage and lifetime of the network to cover the area of interest with a maximum number rounds and by letting the other nodes sleep in order to be used later in next rounds, our MuDiLCO protocol efficiently prolonges the network lifetime.
1024 %In Figure~\ref{fig8}, Comparison shows that our MuDiLCO protocol, which are used distributed optimization on the subregions with the ability of producing T rounds, is the best one because it is robust to network disconnection during the network lifetime as well as it consume less energy in comparison with other approaches. It also means that distributing the protocol in each sensor node and subdividing the sensing field into many subregions, which are managed independently and simultaneously, is the most relevant way to maximize the lifetime of a network.
1027 %We see that our MuDiLCO-7 protocol results in execution times that quickly become unsuitable for a sensor network as well as the energy consumption seems to be huge because it used a larger number of rounds T during performing the optimization decision in the subregions, which is led to decrease the network lifetime. On the other side, our MuDiLCO-1, 3, and 5 protocol seems to be more efficient in comparison with other approaches because they are prolonged the lifetime of the network more than DESK and GAF.
1030 \section{Conclusion and future works}
1031 \label{sec:conclusion}
1033 We have addressed the problem of the coverage and of the lifetime optimization in
1034 wireless sensor networks. This is a key issue as sensor nodes have limited
1035 resources in terms of memory, energy, and computational power. To cope with this
1036 problem, the field of sensing is divided into smaller subregions using the
1037 concept of divide-and-conquer method, and then we propose a protocol which
1038 optimizes coverage and lifetime performances in each subregion. Our protocol,
1039 called MuDiLCO (Multiround Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization) combines
1040 two efficient techniques: network leader election and sensor activity
1042 %, where the challenges
1043 %include how to select the most efficient leader in each subregion and
1044 %the best cover sets %of active nodes that will optimize the network lifetime
1045 %while taking the responsibility of covering the corresponding
1046 %subregion using more than one cover set during the sensing phase.
1047 The activity scheduling in each subregion works in periods, where each period
1048 consists of four phases: (i) Information Exchange, (ii) Leader Election, (iii)
1049 Decision Phase to plan the activity of the sensors over $T$ rounds, (iv) Sensing
1050 Phase itself divided into $T$ rounds.
1052 Simulations results show the relevance of the proposed protocol in terms of
1053 lifetime, coverage ratio, active sensors ratio, energy consumption, execution
1054 time. Indeed, when dealing with large wireless sensor networks, a distributed
1055 approach, like the one we propose, allows to reduce the difficulty of a single
1056 global optimization problem by partitioning it in many smaller problems, one per
1057 subregion, that can be solved more easily. Nevertheless, results also show that
1058 it is not possible to plan the activity of sensors over too many rounds, because
1059 the resulting optimization problem leads to too high resolution times and thus to
1060 an excessive energy consumption.
1062 %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
1063 %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.
1064 % use section* for acknowledgement
1066 \section*{Acknowledgment}
1067 This work is partially funded by the Labex ACTION program (contract ANR-11-LABX-01-01).
1068 As a Ph.D. student, Ali Kadhum IDREES would like to gratefully acknowledge the
1069 University of Babylon - Iraq for the financial support, Campus France (The
1070 French national agency for the promotion of higher education, international
1071 student services, and international mobility).%, and the University ofFranche-Comt\'e - France for all the support in France.
1082 %% The Appendices part is started with the command \appendix;
1083 %% appendix sections are then done as normal sections
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