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27 %\title{Authors' Instructions \subtitle{Preparation of Camera-Ready Contributions to SCITEPRESS Proceedings} }
29 \title{Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization Protocol \\
30 in Wireless Sensor Networks}
32 \author{Ali Kadhum Idrees$^{a,b}$, Karine Deschinkel$^{a}$,\\ Michel Salomon$^{a}$, and Rapha\"el Couturier$^{a}$\\
33 $^{a}$FEMTO-ST Institute, UMR 6174 CNRS, \\ University Bourgogne Franche-Comt\'e, Belfort, France\\
34 $^{b}${\em{Department of Computer Science, University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq}}\\
35 email: ali.idness@edu.univ-fcomte.fr,\\ $\lbrace$karine.deschinkel, michel.salomon, raphael.couturier$\rbrace$@univ-fcomte.fr}
37 %\author{Ali Kadhum Idrees$^{a,b}$, Karine Deschinkel$^{a}$,\\ Michel Salomon$^{a}$, and Rapha\"el Couturier $^{a}$ \\
38 %$^{a}${\em{FEMTO-ST Institute, UMR 6174 CNRS, University Bourgogne Franche-Comt\'e,\\ Belfort, France}} \\
39 %$^{b}${\em{Department of Computer Science, University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq}} }
43 %\keywords{Wireless Sensor Networks, Area Coverage, Network lifetime,Optimization, Scheduling.}
45 \abstract{ One of the main research challenges faced in Wireless Sensor Networks
46 (WSNs) is to preserve continuously and effectively the coverage of an area (or
47 region) of interest to be monitored, while simultaneously preventing as much
48 as possible a network failure due to battery-depleted nodes. In this paper we
49 propose a protocol, called Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization protocol
50 (DiLCO), which maintains the coverage and improves the lifetime of a wireless
51 sensor network. First, we partition the area of interest into subregions using
52 a classical divide-and-conquer method. Our DiLCO protocol is then distributed
53 on the sensor nodes in each subregion in a second step. To fulfill our
54 objective, the proposed protocol combines two effective techniques: a leader
55 election in each subregion, followed by an optimization-based node activity
56 scheduling performed by each elected leader. This two-step process takes
57 place periodically, in order to choose a small set of nodes remaining active
58 for sensing during a time slot. Each set is built to ensure coverage at a low
59 energy cost, allowing to optimize the network lifetime.
61 %period consists of four phases: (i)~Information Exchange, (ii)~Leader
62 %Election, (iii)~Decision, and (iv)~Sensing. The decision process, which
63 % results in an activity scheduling vector, is carried out by a leader node
64 % through the solving of an integer program.
66 Simulations are conducted using the discret event simulator
67 OMNET++. We refer to the characterictics of a Medusa II sensor for
68 the energy consumption and the computation time. In comparison with
69 two other existing methods, our approach is able to increase the WSN
70 lifetime and provides improved coverage performance. }
78 \section{\uppercase{Introduction}}
79 \label{sec:introduction}
82 Energy efficiency is a crucial issue in wireless sensor networks since sensory
83 consumption, in order to maximize the network lifetime, represents the major
84 difficulty when designing WSNs. As a consequence, one of the scientific research
85 challenges in WSNs, which has been addressed by a large amount of literature
86 during the last few years, is the design of energy efficient approaches for
87 coverage and connectivity~\cite{conti2014mobile}. Coverage reflects how well a
88 sensor field is monitored. On the one hand we want to monitor the area of
89 interest in the most efficient way~\cite{Nayak04}, \textcolor{blue}{which means
90 that we want to maintain the best coverage as long as possible}. On the other
91 hand we want to use as little energy as possible. Sensor nodes are
92 battery-powered with no means of recharging or replacing, usually due to
93 environmental (hostile or unpractical environments) or cost reasons. Therefore,
94 it is desired that the WSNs are deployed with high densities so as to exploit
95 the overlapping sensing regions of some sensor nodes to save energy by turning
96 off some of them during the sensing phase to prolong the network
97 lifetime. \textcolor{blue}{A WSN can use various types of sensors such as
98 \cite{ref17,ref19}: thermal, seismic, magnetic, visual, infrared, acoustic,
99 and radar. These sensors are capable of observing different physical
100 conditions such as: temperature, humidity, pressure, speed, direction,
101 movement, light, soil makeup, noise levels, presence or absence of certain
102 kinds of objects, and mechanical stress levels on attached objects.
103 Consequently, there is a wide range of WSN applications such as~\cite{ref22}:
104 health-care, environment, agriculture, public safety, military, transportation
105 systems, and industry applications.}
107 In this paper we design a protocol that focuses on the area coverage problem
108 with the objective of maximizing the network lifetime. Our proposition, the
109 Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization (DiLCO) protocol, maintains the
110 coverage and improves the lifetime in WSNs. The area of interest is first
111 divided into subregions using a divide-and-conquer algorithm and an activity
112 scheduling for sensor nodes is then planned by the elected leader in each
113 subregion. In fact, the nodes in a subregion can be seen as a cluster where each
114 node sends sensing data to the cluster head or the sink node. Furthermore, the
115 activities in a subregion/cluster can continue even if another cluster stops due
116 to too many node failures. Our DiLCO protocol considers periods, where a period
117 starts with a discovery phase to exchange information between sensors of the
118 same subregion, in order to choose in a suitable manner a sensor node (the
119 leader) to carry out the coverage strategy. In each subregion the activation of
120 the sensors for the sensing phase of the current period is obtained by solving
121 an integer program. The resulting activation vector is broadcast by a leader to
122 every node of its subregion.
125 Our previous paper ~\cite{idrees2014coverage} relies almost exclusively on the
126 framework of the DiLCO approach and the coverage problem formulation. In this
127 paper we made more realistic simulations by taking into account the
128 characteristics of a Medusa II sensor ~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} to measure
129 the energy consumption and the computation time. We have implemented two other
130 existing \textcolor{blue}{and distributed approaches} (DESK ~\cite{ChinhVu}, and
131 GAF ~\cite{xu2001geography}) in order to compare their performances with our
132 approach. \textcolor{blue}{We focus on DESK and GAF protocols for two reasons.
133 First our protocol is inspired by both of them: DiLCO uses a regular division
134 of the area of interest as in GAF and a temporal division in rounds as in
135 DESK. Second, DESK and GAF are well-known protocols, easy to implement, and
136 often used as references for comparison}. We also focus on performance
137 analysis based on the number of subregions.
140 The remainder of the paper continues with Section~\ref{sec:Literature Review}
141 where a review of some related works is presented. The next section describes
142 the DiLCO protocol, followed in Section~\ref{cp} by the coverage model
143 formulation which is used to schedule the activation of
144 sensors. Section~\ref{sec:Simulation Results and Analysis} shows the simulation
145 results. The paper ends with a conclusion and some suggestions for further work
146 in Section~\ref{sec:Conclusion and Future Works}.
148 \section{\uppercase{Literature Review}}
149 \label{sec:Literature Review}
151 \noindent In this section, we summarize some related works regarding the
152 coverage problem and distinguish our DiLCO protocol from the works presented in
155 The most discussed coverage problems in literature can be classified into three
156 types \cite{li2013survey}: area coverage \cite{Misra} where every point inside
157 an area is to be monitored, target coverage \cite{yang2014novel} where the main
158 objective is to cover only a finite number of discrete points called targets,
159 and barrier coverage \cite{Kumar:2005}\cite{kim2013maximum} to prevent intruders
160 from entering into the region of interest. In \cite{Deng2012} authors transform
161 the area coverage problem to the target coverage problem taking into account the
162 intersection points among disks of sensors nodes or between disk of sensor nodes
163 and boundaries. {\it In DiLCO protocol, the area coverage, i.e. the coverage of
164 every point in the sensing region, is transformed to the coverage of a
165 fraction of points called primary points. }
167 The major approach to extend network lifetime while preserving coverage is to
168 divide/organize the sensors into a suitable number of set covers (disjoint or
169 non-disjoint), where each set completely covers a region of interest, and to
170 activate these set covers successively. The network activity can be planned in
171 advance and scheduled for the entire network lifetime or organized in periods,
172 and the set of active sensor nodes is decided at the beginning of each period
173 \cite{ling2009energy}. Active node selection is determined based on the problem
174 requirements (e.g. area monitoring, connectivity, power efficiency). For
175 instance, Jaggi et al. \cite{jaggi2006} address the problem of maximizing
176 network lifetime by dividing sensors into the maximum number of disjoint subsets
177 such that each subset can ensure both coverage and connectivity. A greedy
178 algorithm is applied once to solve this problem and the computed sets are
179 activated in succession to achieve the desired network lifetime. Vu
180 \cite{chin2007}, Padmatvathy et al. \cite{pc10}, propose algorithms working in a
181 periodic fashion where a cover set is computed at the beginning of each period.
182 {\it Motivated by these works, DiLCO protocol works in periods, where each
183 period contains a preliminary phase for information exchange and decisions,
184 followed by a sensing phase where one cover set is in charge of the sensing
187 Various approaches, including centralized, or distributed algorithms, have been
188 proposed to extend the network lifetime. In distributed
189 algorithms~\cite{yangnovel,ChinhVu,qu2013distributed}, information is
190 disseminated throughout the network and sensors decide cooperatively by
191 communicating with their neighbors which of them will remain in sleep mode for a
192 certain period of time. The centralized
193 algorithms~\cite{cardei2005improving,zorbas2010solving,pujari2011high} always
194 provide nearly or close to optimal solution since the algorithm has global view
195 of the whole network. But such a method has the disadvantage of requiring high
196 communication costs, since the node (located at the base station) making the
197 decision needs information from all the sensor nodes in the area and the amount
198 of information can be huge. {\it In order to be suitable for large-scale
199 network, in the DiLCO protocol, the area coverage is divided into several
200 smaller subregions, and in each one, a node called the leader is in charge for
201 selecting the active sensors for the current period.}
204 \textcolor{blue}{ Our approach to select the leader node in a subregion is quite
205 different from cluster head selection methods used in LEACH
206 \cite{DBLP:conf/hicss/HeinzelmanCB00} or its variants
207 \cite{ijcses11}. Contrary to LEACH, the division of the area of interest is
208 supposed to be performed before the leader election. Moreover, we assume that
209 the sensors are deployed almost uniformly and with high density over the area
210 of interest, such that the division is fixed and regular. As in LEACH, our
211 protocol works in round fashion. In each round, during the pre-sensing phase,
212 nodes make autonomous decisions. In LEACH, each sensor elects itself to be a
213 cluster head, and each non-cluster head will determine its cluster for the
214 round. In our protocol, nodes in the same subregion select their leader. In
215 both protocols, the amount of remaining energy in each node is taken into
216 account to promote the nodes that have the most energy to become leader.
217 Contrary to the LEACH protocol where all sensors will be active during the
218 sensing-phase, our protocol allows to deactivate a subset of sensors through
219 an optimization process which reduces significantly the energy consumption.}
222 A large variety of coverage scheduling algorithms has been developed. Many of
223 the existing algorithms, dealing with the maximization of the number of cover
224 sets, are heuristics. These heuristics involve the construction of a cover set
225 by including in priority the sensor nodes which cover critical targets, that is
226 to say targets that are covered by the smallest number of sensors
227 \cite{berman04,zorbas2010solving}. Other approaches are based on mathematical
228 programming formulations~\cite{cardei2005energy,5714480,pujari2011high,Yang2014}
229 and dedicated techniques (solving with a branch-and-bound algorithms available
230 in optimization solver). The problem is formulated as an optimization problem
231 (maximization of the lifetime or number of cover sets) under target coverage and
232 energy constraints. Column generation techniques, well-known and widely
233 practiced techniques for solving linear programs with too many variables, have
235 used~\cite{castano2013column,rossi2012exact,deschinkel2012column}. {\it In DiLCO
236 protocol, each leader, in each subregion, solves an integer program with a
237 double objective consisting in minimizing the overcoverage and limiting the
238 undercoverage. This program is inspired from the work of \cite{pedraza2006}
239 where the objective is to maximize the number of cover sets.}
241 \section{\uppercase{Description of the DiLCO protocol}}
242 \label{sec:The DiLCO Protocol Description}
244 \noindent In this section, we introduce the DiLCO protocol which is distributed
245 on each subregion in the area of interest. It is based on two efficient
246 techniques: network leader election and sensor activity scheduling for coverage
247 preservation and energy conservation, applied periodically to efficiently
248 maximize the lifetime in the network.
250 \subsection{Assumptions and models}
252 \noindent We consider a sensor network composed of static nodes distributed
253 independently and uniformly at random. A high density deployment ensures a high
254 coverage ratio of the interested area at the start. The nodes are supposed to
255 have homogeneous characteristics from a communication and a processing point of
256 view, whereas they have heterogeneous energy provisions. Each node has access
257 to its location thanks, either to a hardware component (like a GPS unit), or a
258 location discovery algorithm.
260 \indent We consider a boolean disk coverage model which is the most widely used
261 sensor coverage model in the literature. Thus, since a sensor has a constant
262 sensing range $R_s$, every space points within a disk centered at a sensor with
263 the radius of the sensing range is said to be covered by this sensor. We also
264 assume that the communication range $R_c \geq 2R_s$. In fact, Zhang and
265 Hou~\cite{Zhang05} proved that if the transmission range fulfills the previous
266 hypothesis, a complete coverage of a convex area implies connectivity among the
267 working nodes in the active mode.
269 \indent For each sensor we also define a set of points called primary
270 points~\cite{idrees2014coverage} to approximate the area coverage it provides,
271 rather than working with a continuous coverage. Thus, a sensing disk
272 corresponding to a sensor node is covered by its neighboring nodes if all its
273 primary points are covered. Obviously, the approximation of coverage is more or
274 less accurate according to the number of primary points.
276 \subsection{Main idea}
278 \noindent We start by applying a divide-and-conquer algorithm to partition the
279 area of interest into smaller areas called subregions and then our protocol is
280 executed simultaneously in each subregion. \textcolor{blue}{Sensor nodes are
281 assumed to be deployed almost uniformly over the region and the subdivision of
282 the area of interest is regular.}
286 \includegraphics[width=75mm]{FirstModel.pdf} % 70mm
287 \caption{DiLCO protocol}
291 As shown in Figure~\ref{fig2}, the proposed DiLCO protocol is a periodic
292 protocol where each period is decomposed into 4~phases: Information Exchange,
293 Leader Election, Decision, and Sensing. For each period there will be exactly
294 one cover set in charge of the sensing task. A periodic scheduling is
295 interesting because it enhances the robustness of the network against node failures.
296 % \textcolor{blue}{Many WSN applications have communication requirements that are periodic and known previously such as collecting temperature statistics at regular intervals. This periodic nature can be used to provide a regular schedule to sensor nodes and thus avoid a sensor failure. If the period time increases, the reliability and energy consumption are decreased and vice versa}.
297 First, a node that has not enough energy to complete a period, or
298 which fails before the decision is taken, will be excluded from the scheduling
299 process. Second, if a node fails later, whereas it was supposed to sense the
300 region of interest, it will only affect the quality of the coverage until the
301 definition of a new cover set in the next period. Constraints, like energy
302 consumption, can be easily taken into consideration since the sensors can update
303 and exchange their information during the first phase. Let us notice that the
304 phases before the sensing one (Information Exchange, Leader Election, and
305 Decision) are energy consuming for all the nodes, even nodes that will not be
306 retained by the leader to keep watch over the corresponding area.
308 During the execution of the DiLCO protocol, two kinds of packet will be used:
309 %\begin{enumerate}[(a)]
311 \item INFO packet: sent by each sensor node to all the nodes inside a same
312 subregion for information exchange.
313 \item ActiveSleep packet: sent by the leader to all the nodes in its subregion
314 to inform them to stay Active or to go Sleep during the sensing phase.
317 and each sensor node will have five possible status in the network:
318 %\begin{enumerate}[(a)]
320 \item LISTENING: sensor is waiting for a decision (to be active or not);
321 \item COMPUTATION: sensor applies the optimization process as leader;
322 \item ACTIVE: sensor is active;
323 \item SLEEP: sensor is turned off;
324 \item COMMUNICATION: sensor is transmitting or receiving packet.
328 An outline of the protocol implementation is given by Algorithm~\ref{alg:DiLCO}
329 which describes the execution of a period by a node (denoted by $s_j$ for a
330 sensor node indexed by $j$). At the beginning a node checks whether it has
331 enough energy \textcolor{blue}{(its energy should be greater than a fixed
332 treshold $E_{th}$)} to stay active during the next sensing phase. If yes, it
333 exchanges information with all the other nodes belonging to the same subregion:
334 it collects from each node its position coordinates, remaining energy ($RE_j$),
335 ID, and the number of one-hop neighbors still alive. \textcolor{blue}{INFO
336 packet contains two parts: header and data payload. The sensor ID is included
337 in the header, where the header size is 8 bits. The data part includes
338 position coordinates (64 bits), remaining energy (32 bits), and the number of
339 one-hop live neighbors (8 bits). Therefore the size of the INFO packet is 112
340 bits.} Once the first phase is completed, the nodes of a subregion choose a
341 leader to take the decision based on the following criteria with decreasing
342 importance: larger number of neighbors, larger remaining energy, and then in
343 case of equality, larger index. After that, if the sensor node is leader, it
344 will solve an integer program (see Section~\ref{cp}). \textcolor{blue}{This
345 integer program contains boolean variables $X_j$ where ($X_j=1$) means that
346 sensor $j$ will be active in the next sensing phase. Only sensors with enough
347 remaining energy are involved in the integer program ($J$ is the set of all
348 sensors involved). As the leader consumes energy (computation energy is
349 denoted by $E^{comp}$) to solve the optimization problem, it will be included
350 in the integer program only if it has enough energy to achieve the computation
351 and to stay alive during the next sensing phase, that is to say if $RE_j >
352 E^{comp}+E_{th}$. Once the optimization problem is solved, each leader will
353 send an ActiveSleep packet to each sensor in the same subregion to indicate it
354 if it has to be active or not. Otherwise, if the sensor is not the leader, it
355 will wait for the ActiveSleep packet to know its state for the coming sensing
357 %which provides a set of sensors planned to be
358 %active in the next sensing phase.
360 \begin{algorithm}[h!]
363 %\emph{Initialize the sensor node and determine it's position and subregion} \;
365 \If{ $RE_j \geq E_{th}$ }{
366 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
367 \emph{Send $INFO()$ packet to other nodes in the subregion}\;
368 \emph{Wait $INFO()$ packet from other nodes in the subregion}\;
369 %\emph{UPDATE $RE_j$ for every sent or received INFO Packet}\;
370 %\emph{ Collect information and construct the list L for all nodes in the subregion}\;
372 %\If{ the received INFO Packet = No. of nodes in it's subregion -1 }{
373 \emph{LeaderID = Leader election}\;
374 \If{$ s_j.ID = LeaderID $}{
375 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMPUTATION}\;
376 \emph{$\left\{\left(X_{1},\dots,X_{k},\dots,X_{J}\right)\right\}$ =
377 Execute Integer Program Algorithm($J$)}\;
378 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
379 \emph{Send $ActiveSleep()$ to each node $k$ in subregion} \;
380 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
383 \emph{$s_j.status$ = LISTENING}\;
384 \emph{Wait $ActiveSleep()$ packet from the Leader}\;
386 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
390 \Else { Exclude $s_j$ from entering in the current sensing phase}
393 \caption{DiLCO($s_j$)}
398 \section{\uppercase{Coverage problem formulation}}
402 We formulate the coverage optimization problem with an integer program.
403 The objective function consists in minimizing the undercoverage and the overcoverage of the area as suggested in \cite{pedraza2006}.
404 The area coverage problem is expressed as the coverage of a fraction of points called primary points.
405 Details on the choice and the number of primary points can be found in \cite{idrees2014coverage}. The set of primary points is denoted by $P$
406 and the set of alive sensors by $J$. As we consider a boolean disk coverage model, we use the boolean indicator $\alpha_{jp}$ which is equal to 1 if the primary point $p$ is in the sensing range of the sensor $j$. The binary variable $X_j$ represents the activation or not of the sensor $j$. So we can express the number of active sensors that cover the primary point $p$ by $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j}$. We deduce the overcoverage denoted by $\Theta_p$ of the primary point $p$ :
408 \Theta_{p} = \left \{
410 0 & \mbox{if the primary point}\\
411 & \mbox{$p$ is not covered,}\\
412 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
416 More precisely, $\Theta_{p}$ represents the number of active sensor
417 nodes minus one that cover the primary point~$p$.
418 In the same way, we define the undercoverage variable
419 $U_{p}$ of the primary point $p$ as:
423 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered,} \\
424 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
428 There is, of course, a relationship between the three variables $X_j$, $\Theta_p$, and $U_p$ which can be formulated as follows :
430 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, \forall p \in P
432 If the point $p$ is not covered, $U_p=1$, $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j}=0$ and $\Theta_{p}=0$ by definition, so the equality is satisfied.
433 On the contrary, if the point $p$ is covered, $U_p=0$, and $\Theta_{p}=\left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} \right)- 1$.
434 \noindent Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows:
435 \begin{equation} \label{eq:ip2r}
438 \min \sum_{p \in P} (w_{\theta} \Theta_{p} + w_{U} U_{p})&\\
439 \textrm{subject to :}&\\
440 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, &\forall p \in P\\
442 %\sum_{t \in T} X_{j,t} \leq \frac{RE_j}{e_t} &\forall j \in J \\
444 \Theta_{p}\in \mathbb{N}, &\forall p \in P\\
445 U_{p} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall p \in P \\
446 X_{j} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall j \in J
450 The objective function is a weighted sum of overcoverage and undercoverage. The goal is to limit the overcoverage in order to activate a minimal number of sensors while simultaneously preventing undercoverage. \textcolor{blue}{ By
451 choosing $w_{U}$ much larger than $w_{\theta}$, the coverage of a
452 maximum of primary points is ensured. Then for the same number of covered
453 primary points, the solution with a minimal number of active sensors is
455 %Both weights $w_\theta$ and $w_U$ must be carefully chosen in
456 %order to guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each
462 \indent Our model is based on the model proposed by \cite{pedraza2006} where the
463 objective is to find a maximum number of disjoint cover sets. To accomplish
464 this goal, the authors proposed an integer program which forces undercoverage
465 and overcoverage of targets to become minimal at the same time. They use binary
466 variables $x_{jl}$ to indicate if sensor $j$ belongs to cover set $l$. In our
467 model, we consider that the binary variable $X_{j}$ determines the activation of
468 sensor $j$ in the sensing phase. We also consider primary points as targets.
469 The set of primary points is denoted by $P$ and the set of sensors by $J$.
471 \noindent Let $\alpha_{jp}$ denote the indicator function of whether the primary
472 point $p$ is covered, that is:
474 \alpha_{jp} = \left \{
476 1 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$ is covered} \\
477 & \mbox{by sensor node $j$}, \\
478 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
482 The number of active sensors that cover the primary point $p$ can then be
483 computed by $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j}$ where:
487 1& \mbox{if sensor $j$ is active,} \\
488 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
492 We define the Overcoverage variable $\Theta_{p}$ as:
494 \Theta_{p} = \left \{
496 0 & \mbox{if the primary point}\\
497 & \mbox{$p$ is not covered,}\\
498 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
502 \noindent More precisely, $\Theta_{p}$ represents the number of active sensor
503 nodes minus one that cover the primary point~$p$. The Undercoverage variable
504 $U_{p}$ of the primary point $p$ is defined by:
508 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered,} \\
509 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
514 \noindent Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows:
515 \begin{equation} \label{eq:ip2r}
518 \min \sum_{p \in P} (w_{\theta} \Theta_{p} + w_{U} U_{p})&\\
519 \textrm{subject to :}&\\
520 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, &\forall p \in P\\
522 %\sum_{t \in T} X_{j,t} \leq \frac{RE_j}{e_t} &\forall j \in J \\
524 \Theta_{p}\in \mathbb{N}, &\forall p \in P\\
525 U_{p} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall p \in P \\
526 X_{j} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall j \in J
532 \item $X_{j}$ : indicates whether or not the sensor $j$ is actively sensing (1
533 if yes and 0 if not);
534 \item $\Theta_{p}$ : {\it overcoverage}, the number of sensors minus one that
535 are covering the primary point $p$;
536 \item $U_{p}$ : {\it undercoverage}, indicates whether or not the primary point
537 $p$ is being covered (1 if not covered and 0 if covered).
540 The first group of constraints indicates that some primary point $p$ should be
541 covered by at least one sensor and, if it is not always the case, overcoverage
542 and undercoverage variables help balancing the restriction equations by taking
543 positive values. Two objectives can be noticed in our model. First, we limit the
544 overcoverage of primary points to activate as few sensors as possible. Second,
545 to avoid a lack of area monitoring in a subregion we minimize the
546 undercoverage. Both weights $w_\theta$ and $w_U$ must be carefully chosen in
547 order to guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each
552 \section{\uppercase{Protocol evaluation}}
553 \label{sec:Simulation Results and Analysis}
554 \noindent \subsection{Simulation framework}
556 To assess the performance of our DiLCO protocol, we have used the discrete
557 event simulator OMNeT++ \cite{varga} to run different series of simulations.
558 Table~\ref{table3} gives the chosen parameters setting.
561 \caption{Relevant parameters for network initializing.}
564 % used for centering table
566 % centered columns (4 columns)
568 %inserts double horizontal lines
569 Parameter & Value \\ [0.5ex]
571 %Case & Strategy (with Two Leaders) & Strategy (with One Leader) & Simple Heuristic \\ [0.5ex]
575 % inserts single horizontal line
576 Sensing Field & $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ \\
577 % inserting body of the table
579 Nodes Number & 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250~nodes \\
581 Initial Energy & 500-700~joules \\
583 Sensing Period & 60 Minutes \\
584 $E_{th}$ & 36 Joules\\
588 % [1ex] adds vertical space
594 % is used to refer this table in the text
597 Simulations with five different node densities going from 50 to 250~nodes were
598 performed considering each time 25~randomly generated networks, to obtain
599 experimental results which are relevant. The nodes are deployed on a field of
600 interest of $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ in such a way that they cover the field with a
603 We chose as energy consumption model the one proposed proposed by~\cite{ChinhVu}
604 and based on ~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} with slight modifications. The energy
605 consumed by the communications is added and the part relative to a variable
606 sensing range is removed. We also assume that the nodes have the characteristics
607 of the Medusa II sensor node platform \cite{raghunathan2002energy}. A sensor
608 node typically consists of four units: a MicroController Unit, an Atmels AVR
609 ATmega103L in case of Medusa II, to perform the computations; a communication
610 (radio) unit able to send and receive messages; a sensing unit to collect data;
611 a power supply which provides the energy consumed by node. Except the battery,
612 all the other unit can be switched off to save energy according to the node
613 status. Table~\ref{table4} summarizes the energy consumed (in milliWatt per
614 second) by a node for each of its possible status.
617 \caption{Energy consumption model}
620 % used for centering table
622 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}
623 % centered columns (4 columns)
625 %inserts double horizontal lines
626 Sensor status & MCU & Radio & Sensing & Power (mW) \\ [0.5ex]
628 % inserts single horizontal line
629 Listening & ON & ON & ON & 20.05 \\
630 % inserting body of the table
632 Active & ON & OFF & ON & 9.72 \\
634 Sleep & OFF & OFF & OFF & 0.02 \\
636 Computation & ON & ON & ON & 26.83 \\
638 %\multicolumn{4}{|c|}{Energy needed to send/receive a 1-bit} & 0.2575\\
644 % is used to refer this table in the text
647 Less influent energy consumption sources like when turning on the radio,
648 starting the sensor node, changing the status of a node, etc., will be neglected
649 for the sake of simplicity. Each node saves energy by switching off its radio
650 once it has received its decision status from the corresponding leader (it can
651 be itself). As explained previously in subsection~\ref{main_idea}, two kinds of
652 packets for communication are considered in our protocol: INFO packet and
653 ActiveSleep packet. To compute the energy needed by a node to transmit or
654 receive such packets, we use the equation giving the energy spent to send a
655 1-bit-content message defined in~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} (we assume
656 symmetric communication costs), and we set their respective size to 112 and
657 24~bits. The energy required to send or receive a 1-bit-content message is thus
660 Each node has an initial energy level, in Joules, which is randomly drawn in
661 $[500-700]$. If its energy provision reaches a value below the threshold
662 $E_{th}=36$~Joules, the minimum energy needed for a node to stay active during
663 one period, it will no longer take part in the coverage task. This value
664 corresponds to the energy needed by the sensing phase, obtained by multiplying
665 the energy consumed in active state (9.72 mW) by the time in seconds for one
666 period (3,600 seconds), and adding the energy for the pre-sensing phases.
667 According to the interval of initial energy, a sensor may be active during at
670 In the simulations, we introduce the following performance metrics to evaluate
671 the efficiency of our approach:
673 %\begin{enumerate}[i)]
675 \item {{\bf Network Lifetime}:} we define the network lifetime as the time until
676 the coverage ratio drops below a predefined threshold. We denote by
677 $Lifetime_{95}$ (respectively $Lifetime_{50}$) the amount of time during which
678 the network can satisfy an area coverage greater than $95\%$ (respectively
679 $50\%$). We assume that the sensor network can fulfill its task until all its
680 nodes have been drained of their energy or it becomes disconnected. Network
681 connectivity is crucial because an active sensor node without connectivity
682 towards a base station cannot transmit any information regarding an observed
683 event in the area that it monitors.
685 \item {{\bf Coverage Ratio (CR)}:} it measures how well the WSN is able to
686 observe the area of interest. In our case, we discretized the sensor field
687 as a regular grid, which yields the following equation to compute the
691 \mbox{CR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{$n$}}{\mbox{$N$}} \times 100.
693 where $n$ is the number of covered grid points by active sensors of every
694 subregions during the current sensing phase and $N$ is the total number of grid
695 points in the sensing field. In our simulations, we have a layout of $N = 51
696 \times 26 = 1326$ grid points.
698 \item {{\bf Energy Consumption}:} energy consumption (EC) can be seen as the
699 total amount of energy consumed by the sensors during $Lifetime_{95}$
700 or $Lifetime_{50}$, divided by the number of periods. Formally, the computation
701 of EC can be expressed as follows:
704 \mbox{EC} = \frac{\sum\limits_{m=1}^{M} \left( E^{\mbox{com}}_m+E^{\mbox{list}}_m+E^{\mbox{comp}}_m
705 + E^{a}_m+E^{s}_m \right)}{M},
708 where $M$ corresponds to the number of periods. The total amount of energy
709 consumed by the sensors (EC) comes through taking into consideration four main
710 energy factors. The first one, denoted $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{com}}_m$,
711 represents the energy consumption spent by all the nodes for wireless
712 communications during period $m$. $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{list}}_m$, the next
713 factor, corresponds to the energy consumed by the sensors in LISTENING status
714 before receiving the decision to go active or sleep in period $m$.
715 $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{comp}}_m$ refers to the energy needed by all the leader
716 nodes to solve the integer program during a period. Finally, $E^a_{m}$ and
717 $E^s_{m}$ indicate the energy consumed by the whole network in the sensing phase
718 (active and sleeping nodes).
723 %\subsection{Performance Analysis for different subregions}
724 \subsection{Performance analysis}
727 In this subsection, we first focus on the performance of our DiLCO protocol for
728 different numbers of subregions. We consider partitions of the WSN area into
729 $2$, $4$, $8$, $16$, and $32$ subregions. Thus the DiLCO protocol is declined in
730 five versions: DiLCO-2, DiLCO-4, DiLCO-8, DiLCO-16, and DiLCO-32. Simulations
731 without partitioning the area of interest, cases which correspond to a
732 centralized approach, are not presented because they require high execution
733 times to solve the integer program and therefore consume too much energy.
735 We compare our protocol to two other approaches. The first one, called DESK and
736 proposed by ~\cite{ChinhVu} is a fully distributed coverage algorithm. The
737 second one, called GAF ~\cite{xu2001geography}, consists in dividing the region
738 into fixed squares. During the decision phase, in each square, one sensor is
739 chosen to remain active during the sensing phase.
741 \subsubsection{Coverage ratio}
743 Figure~\ref{fig3} shows the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes. It
744 can be seen that both DESK and GAF provide a coverage ratio which is slightly
745 better compared to DiLCO in the first thirty periods. This can be easily
746 explained by the number of active nodes: the optimization process of our
747 protocol activates less nodes than DESK or GAF, resulting in a slight decrease
748 of the coverage ratio. In case of DiLCO-2 (respectively DiLCO-4), the coverage
749 ratio exhibits a fast decrease with the number of periods and reaches zero value
750 in period~18 (respectively 46), whereas the other versions of DiLCO, DESK, and
751 GAF ensure a coverage ratio above 50\% for subsequent periods. We believe that
752 the results obtained with these two methods can be explained by a high
753 consumption of energy and we will check this assumption in the next subsection.
755 Concerning DiLCO-8, DiLCO-16, and DiLCO-32, these methods seem to be more
756 efficient than DESK and GAF, since they can provide the same level of coverage
757 (except in the first periods where DESK and GAF slightly outperform them) for a
758 greater number of periods. In fact, when our protocol is applied with a large
759 number of subregions (from 8 to 32~regions), it activates a restricted number of
760 nodes, and thus enables the extension of the network lifetime.
765 \includegraphics[scale=0.475] {CR.pdf}
766 \caption{Coverage ratio}
771 \subsubsection{Energy consumption}
773 Based on the results shown in Figure~\ref{fig3}, we focus on the DiLCO-16 and
774 DiLCO-32 versions of our protocol, and we compare their energy consumption with
775 the DESK and GAF approaches. For each sensor node we measure the energy consumed
776 according to its successive status, for different network densities. We denote
777 by $\mbox{\it Protocol}/50$ (respectively $\mbox{\it Protocol}/95$) the amount
778 of energy consumed while the area coverage is greater than $50\%$ (repectively
779 $95\%$), where {\it Protocol} is one of the four protocols we compare.
780 Figure~\ref{fig95} presents the energy consumptions observed for network sizes
781 going from 50 to 250~nodes. Let us notice that the same network sizes will be
782 used for the different performance metrics.
786 \includegraphics[scale=0.475]{EC.pdf}
787 \caption{Energy consumption per period}
791 The results depict the good performance of the different versions of our
792 protocol. Indeed, the protocols DiLCO-16/50, DiLCO-32/50, DiLCO-16/95, and
793 DiLCO-32/95 consume less energy than their DESK and GAF counterparts for a
794 similar level of area coverage. This observation reflects the larger number of
795 nodes set active by DESK and GAF.
797 Now, if we consider a same protocol, we can notice that the average consumption
798 per period increases slightly for our protocol when increasing the level of
799 coverage and the number of node, whereas it increases more largely for DESK and
800 GAF. In case of DiLCO, it means that even if a larger network allows to improve
801 the number of periods with a minimum coverage level value, this improvement has
802 a higher energy cost per period due to communication overhead and a more
803 difficult optimization problem. However, in comparison with DESK and GAF, our
804 approach has a reasonable energy overcost.
806 \subsubsection{Execution time}
808 Another interesting point to investigate is the evolution of the execution time
809 with the size of the WSN and the number of subregions. Therefore, we report for
810 every version of our protocol the average execution times in seconds needed to
811 solve the optimization problem for different WSN sizes. The execution times are
812 obtained on a laptop DELL which has an Intel Core~i3~2370~M~(2.4~GHz) dual core
813 processor and a MIPS rating equal to 35330. The corresponding execution times on
814 a MEDUSA II sensor node are then extrapolated according to the MIPS rate of the
815 Atmels AVR ATmega103L microcontroller (6~MHz), which is equal to 6, by
816 multiplying the laptop times by $\left(\frac{35330}{2} \times
817 \frac{1}{6}\right)$. The expected times on a sensor node are reported on
822 \includegraphics[scale=0.475]{T.pdf}
823 \caption{Execution time in seconds}
827 Figure~\ref{fig8} shows that DiLCO-32 has very low execution times in comparison
828 with other DiLCO versions, because the activity scheduling is tackled by a
829 larger number of leaders and each leader solves an integer problem with a
830 limited number of variables and constraints. Conversely, DiLCO-2 requires to
831 solve an optimization problem with half of the network nodes and thus presents a
832 high execution time. Nevertheless if we refer to Figure~\ref{fig3}, we observe
833 that DiLCO-32 is slightly less efficient than DilCO-16 to maintain as long as
834 possible high coverage. In fact an excessive subdivision of the area of interest
835 prevents it to ensure a good coverage especially on the borders of the
836 subregions. Thus, the optimal number of subregions can be seen as a trade-off
837 between execution time and coverage performance.
839 \subsubsection{Network lifetime}
841 In the next figure, the network lifetime is illustrated. Obviously, the lifetime
842 increases with the network size, whatever the considered protocol, since the
843 correlated node density also increases. A high network density means a high
844 node redundancy which allows to turn-off many nodes and thus to prolong the
849 \includegraphics[scale=0.475]{LT.pdf}
850 \caption{Network lifetime}
854 As highlighted by Figure~\ref{figLT95}, when the coverage level is relaxed
855 ($50\%$) the network lifetime also improves. This observation reflects the fact
856 that the higher the coverage performance, the more nodes must be active to
857 ensure the wider monitoring. For a similar level of coverage, DiLCO outperforms
858 DESK and GAF for the lifetime of the network. More specifically, if we focus on
859 the larger level of coverage ($95\%$) in the case of our protocol, the
860 subdivision in $16$~subregions seems to be the most appropriate.
863 \section{\uppercase{Conclusion and future work}}
864 \label{sec:Conclusion and Future Works}
866 A crucial problem in WSN is to schedule the sensing activities of the different
867 nodes in order to ensure both coverage of the area of interest and longer
868 network lifetime. The inherent limitations of sensor nodes, in energy provision,
869 communication and computing capacities, require protocols that optimize the use
870 of the available resources to fulfill the sensing task. To address this
871 problem, this paper proposes a two-step approach. Firstly, the field of sensing
872 is divided into smaller subregions using the concept of divide-and-conquer
873 method. Secondly, a distributed protocol called Distributed Lifetime Coverage
874 Optimization is applied in each subregion to optimize the coverage and lifetime
875 performances. In a subregion, our protocol consists in electing a leader node
876 which will then perform a sensor activity scheduling. The challenges include how
877 to select the most efficient leader in each subregion and the best
878 representative set of active nodes to ensure a high level of coverage. To assess
879 the performance of our approach, we compared it with two other approaches using
880 many performance metrics like coverage ratio or network lifetime. We have also
881 studied the impact of the number of subregions chosen to subdivide the area of
882 interest, considering different network sizes. The experiments show that
883 increasing the number of subregions improves the lifetime. The more subregions
884 there are, the more robust the network is against random disconnection resulting
885 from dead nodes. However, for a given sensing field and network size there is
886 an optimal number of subregions. Therefore, in case of our simulation context a
887 subdivision in $16$~subregions seems to be the most relevant. The optimal number
888 of subregions will be investigated in the future.
890 \section*{\uppercase{Acknowledgements}}
892 \noindent As a Ph.D. student, Ali Kadhum IDREES would like to gratefully
893 acknowledge the University of Babylon - IRAQ for the financial support and
894 Campus France for the received support. This paper is also partially funded by
895 the Labex ACTION program (contract ANR-11-LABX-01-01).
898 \bibliographystyle{plain}
900 \bibliography{Example}}