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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. Simulations are conducted using the discrete event simulator OMNET++. We refer to the characterictics of a Medusa II sensor for the energy consumption and the computation time. In comparison with two other existing methods, our approach is able to increase the WSN lifetime and provides improved coverage performances. }
67 \section{\uppercase{Introduction}}
68 \label{sec:introduction}
71 Energy efficiency is a crucial issue in wireless sensor networks since sensory
72 consumption, in order to maximize the network lifetime, represents the major
73 difficulty when designing WSNs. As a consequence, one of the scientific research
74 challenges in WSNs, which has been addressed by a large amount of literature
75 during the last few years, is the design of energy efficient approaches for
76 coverage and connectivity~\cite{conti2014mobile}. Coverage reflects how well a
77 sensor field is monitored. On the one hand we want to monitor the area of
78 interest in the most efficient way~\cite{Nayak04}, which means
79 that we want to maintain the best coverage as long as possible. On the other
80 hand we want to use as little energy as possible. Sensor nodes are
81 battery-powered with no means of recharging or replacing, usually due to
82 environmental (hostile or unpractical environments) or cost reasons. Therefore,
83 it is desired that the WSNs are deployed with high densities so as to exploit
84 the overlapping sensing regions of some sensor nodes to save energy by turning
85 off some of them during the sensing phase to prolong the network
86 lifetime. A WSN can use various types of sensors such as
87 \cite{ref17,ref19}: thermal, seismic, magnetic, visual, infrared, acoustic,
88 and radar. These sensors are capable of observing different physical
89 conditions such as: temperature, humidity, pressure, speed, direction,
90 movement, light, soil makeup, noise levels, presence or absence of certain
91 kinds of objects, and mechanical stress levels on attached objects.
92 Consequently, there is a wide range of WSN applications such as~\cite{ref22}:
93 health-care, environment, agriculture, public safety, military, transportation
94 systems, and industry applications.
96 In this paper we design a protocol that focuses on the area coverage problem
97 with the objective of maximizing the network lifetime. Our proposition, the
98 Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization (DiLCO) protocol, maintains the
99 coverage and improves the lifetime in WSNs. The area of interest is first
100 divided into subregions using a divide-and-conquer algorithm and an activity
101 scheduling for sensor nodes is then planned by the elected leader in each
102 subregion. In fact, the nodes in a subregion can be seen as a cluster where each
103 node sends sensing data to the cluster head or the sink node. Furthermore, the
104 activities in a subregion/cluster can continue even if another cluster stops due
105 to too many node failures. Our DiLCO protocol considers periods, where a period
106 starts with a discovery phase to exchange information between sensors of the
107 same subregion, in order to choose in a suitable manner a sensor node (the
108 leader) to carry out the coverage strategy. In each subregion the activation of
109 the sensors for the sensing phase of the current period is obtained by solving
110 an integer program. The resulting activation vector is broadcast by a leader to
111 every node of its subregion.
114 Our previous paper ~\cite{idrees2014coverage} relies almost exclusively on the
115 framework of the DiLCO approach and the coverage problem formulation. In this
116 paper we made more realistic simulations by taking into account the
117 characteristics of a Medusa II sensor ~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} to measure
118 the energy consumption and the computation time. We have implemented two other
119 existing and distributed approaches (DESK ~\cite{ChinhVu}, and
120 GAF ~\cite{xu2001geography}) in order to compare their performances with our
121 approach. We focused on DESK and GAF protocols for two reasons.
122 First our protocol is inspired by both of them: DiLCO uses a regular division
123 of the area of interest as in GAF and a temporal division in rounds as in
124 DESK. Second, DESK and GAF are well-known protocols, easy to implement, and
125 often used as references for comparison. We also focus on performance
126 analysis based on the number of subregions.
129 The remainder of the paper continues with Section~\ref{sec:Literature Review}
130 where a review of some related works is presented. The next section describes
131 the DiLCO protocol, followed in Section~\ref{cp} by the coverage model
132 formulation which is used to schedule the activation of
133 sensors. Section~\ref{sec:Simulation Results and Analysis} shows the simulation
134 results. The paper ends with a conclusion and some suggestions for further work
135 in Section~\ref{sec:Conclusion and Future Works}.
137 \section{\uppercase{Literature Review}}
138 \label{sec:Literature Review}
140 \noindent In this section, we summarize some related works regarding the
141 coverage problem and distinguish our DiLCO protocol from the works presented in
144 The most discussed coverage problems in literature can be classified into three
145 types \cite{li2013survey}: area coverage \cite{Misra} where every point inside
146 an area is to be monitored, target coverage \cite{yang2014novel} where the main
147 objective is to cover only a finite number of discrete points called targets,
148 and barrier coverage \cite{Kumar:2005}\cite{kim2013maximum} to prevent intruders
149 from entering into the region of interest. In \cite{Deng2012} authors transform
150 the area coverage problem to the target coverage problem taking into account the
151 intersection points among disks of sensors nodes or between disk of sensor nodes
152 and boundaries. {\it In DiLCO protocol, the area coverage, i.e. the coverage of
153 every point in the sensing region, is transformed to the coverage of a
154 fraction of points called primary points. }
156 The major approach to extend network lifetime while preserving coverage is to
157 divide/organize the sensors into a suitable number of set covers (disjoint or
158 non-disjoint), where each set completely covers a region of interest, and to
159 activate these set covers successively. The network activity can be planned in
160 advance and scheduled for the entire network lifetime or organized in periods,
161 and the set of active sensor nodes is decided at the beginning of each period
162 \cite{ling2009energy}. Active node selection is determined based on the problem
163 requirements (e.g. area monitoring, connectivity, power efficiency). For
164 instance, Jaggi et al. \cite{jaggi2006} address the problem of maximizing
165 network lifetime by dividing sensors into the maximum number of disjoint subsets
166 so that each subset can ensure both coverage and connectivity. A greedy
167 algorithm is applied once to solve this problem and the computed sets are
168 activated in succession to achieve the desired network lifetime. Vu
169 \cite{chin2007}, Padmatvathy et al. \cite{pc10}, propose algorithms working in a
170 periodic fashion where a cover set is computed at the beginning of each period.
171 {\it Motivated by these works, DiLCO protocol works in periods, where each
172 period contains a preliminary phase for information exchange and decisions,
173 followed by a sensing phase where one cover set is in charge of the sensing
176 Various approaches, including centralized, or distributed algorithms, have been
177 proposed to extend the network lifetime. In distributed
178 algorithms~\cite{yangnovel,ChinhVu,qu2013distributed}, information is
179 disseminated throughout the network and sensors decide cooperatively by
180 communicating with their neighbors which of them will remain in sleep mode for a
181 certain period of time. The centralized
182 algorithms~\cite{cardei2005improving,zorbas2010solving,pujari2011high} always
183 provide nearly or close to optimal solution since the algorithm has global view
184 of the whole network. But such a method has the disadvantage of requiring high
185 communication costs, since the node (located at the base station) making the
186 decision needs information from all the sensor nodes in the area and the amount
187 of information can be huge. {\it In order to be suitable for large-scale
188 network, in the DiLCO protocol, the area coverage is divided into several
189 smaller subregions, and in each one, a node called the leader is in charge for
190 selecting the active sensors for the current period.}
193 Our approach to select the leader node in a subregion is quite
194 different from cluster head selection methods used in LEACH
195 \cite{DBLP:conf/hicss/HeinzelmanCB00} or its variants
196 \cite{ijcses11}. Contrary to LEACH, the division of the area of interest is
197 supposed to be performed before the leader election. Moreover, we assume that
198 the sensors are deployed almost uniformly and with high density over the area
199 of interest, so that the division is fixed and regular. As in LEACH, our
200 protocol works in round fashion. In each round, during the pre-sensing phase,
201 nodes make autonomous decisions. In LEACH, each sensor elects itself to be a
202 cluster head, and each non-cluster head will determine its cluster for the
203 round. In our protocol, nodes in the same subregion select their leader. In
204 both protocols, the amount of remaining energy in each node is taken into
205 account to promote the nodes that have the most energy to become leader.
206 Contrary to the LEACH protocol where all sensors will be active during the
207 sensing-phase, our protocol allows to deactivate a subset of sensors through
208 an optimization process which significantly reduces the energy consumption.
211 A large variety of coverage scheduling algorithms has been developed. Many of
212 the existing algorithms, dealing with the maximization of the number of cover
213 sets, are heuristics. These heuristics involve the construction of a cover set
214 by including in priority the sensor nodes which cover critical targets, that is
215 to say targets that are covered by the smallest number of sensors
216 \cite{berman04,zorbas2010solving}. Other approaches are based on mathematical
217 programming formulations~\cite{cardei2005energy,5714480,pujari2011high,Yang2014}
218 and dedicated techniques (solving with a branch-and-bound algorithms available
219 in optimization solver). The problem is formulated as an optimization problem
220 (maximization of the lifetime or number of cover sets) under target coverage and
221 energy constraints. Column generation techniques, well-known and widely
222 practiced techniques for solving linear programs with too many variables, have
224 used~\cite{castano2013column,rossi2012exact,deschinkel2012column}. {\it In DiLCO
225 protocol, each leader, in each subregion, solves an integer program with a
226 double objective consisting in minimizing the overcoverage and limiting the
227 undercoverage. This program is inspired from the work of \cite{pedraza2006}
228 where the objective is to maximize the number of cover sets.}
230 \section{\uppercase{Description of the DiLCO protocol}}
231 \label{sec:The DiLCO Protocol Description}
233 \noindent In this section, we introduce the DiLCO protocol which is distributed
234 on each subregion in the area of interest. It is based on two efficient
235 techniques: network leader election and sensor activity scheduling for coverage
236 preservation and energy conservation, applied periodically to efficiently
237 maximize the lifetime in the network.
239 \subsection{Assumptions and models}
241 \noindent We consider a sensor network composed of static nodes distributed
242 independently and uniformly at random. A high density deployment ensures a high
243 coverage ratio of the interested area at the start. The nodes are supposed to
244 have homogeneous characteristics from a communication and a processing point of
245 view, whereas they have heterogeneous energy provisions. Each node has access
246 to its location thanks, either to a hardware component (like a GPS unit), or a
247 location discovery algorithm.
249 \indent We consider a boolean disk coverage model which is the most widely used
250 sensor coverage model in the literature. Thus, since a sensor has a constant
251 sensing range $R_s$, every space points within a disk centered at a sensor with
252 the radius of the sensing range is said to be covered by this sensor. We also
253 assume that the communication range $R_c \geq 2R_s$. In fact, Zhang and
254 Hou~\cite{Zhang05} proved that if the transmission range fulfills the previous
255 hypothesis, a complete coverage of a convex area implies connectivity among the
256 working nodes in the active mode.
258 \indent For each sensor we also define a set of points called primary
259 points~\cite{idrees2014coverage} to approximate the area coverage it provides,
260 rather than working with a continuous coverage. Thus, a sensing disk
261 corresponding to a sensor node is covered by its neighboring nodes if all its
262 primary points are covered. Obviously, the approximation of coverage is more or
263 less accurate according to the number of primary points.
265 \subsection{Main idea}
267 \noindent We start by applying a divide-and-conquer algorithm to partition the
268 area of interest into smaller areas called subregions and then our protocol is
269 executed simultaneously in each subregion. Sensor nodes are
270 assumed to be deployed almost uniformly over the region and the subdivision of
271 the area of interest is regular.
275 \includegraphics[width=75mm]{FirstModel.pdf} % 70mm
276 \caption{DiLCO protocol}
280 As shown in Figure~\ref{fig2}, the proposed DiLCO protocol is a periodic
281 protocol where each period is decomposed into 4~phases: Information Exchange,
282 Leader Election, Decision, and Sensing. For each period there will be exactly
283 one cover set in charge of the sensing task. A periodic scheduling is
284 interesting because it enhances the robustness of the network against node failures.
285 % \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}.
286 First, a node that has not enough energy to complete a period, or
287 which fails before the decision is taken, will be excluded from the scheduling
288 process. Second, if a node fails later, whereas it was supposed to sense the
289 region of interest, it will only affect the quality of the coverage until the
290 definition of a new cover set in the next period. Constraints, like energy
291 consumption, can be easily taken into consideration since the sensors can update
292 and exchange their information during the first phase. Let us notice that the
293 phases before the sensing one (Information Exchange, Leader Election, and
294 Decision) are energy consuming for all the nodes, even nodes that will not be
295 retained by the leader to keep watch over the corresponding area.
297 During the execution of the DiLCO protocol, two kinds of packet will be used:
298 %\begin{enumerate}[(a)]
300 \item INFO packet: sent by each sensor node to all the nodes inside a same
301 subregion for information exchange.
302 \item ActiveSleep packet: sent by the leader to all the nodes in its subregion
303 to inform them to stay Active or to go Sleep during the sensing phase.
306 and each sensor node will have five possible status in the network:
307 %\begin{enumerate}[(a)]
309 \item LISTENING: sensor is waiting for a decision (to be active or not);
310 \item COMPUTATION: sensor applies the optimization process as leader;
311 \item ACTIVE: sensor is active;
312 \item SLEEP: sensor is turned off;
313 \item COMMUNICATION: sensor is transmitting or receiving packet.
317 An outline of the protocol implementation is given by Algorithm~\ref{alg:DiLCO}
318 which describes the execution of a period by a node (denoted by $s_j$ for a
319 sensor node indexed by $j$). At the beginning a node checks whether it has
320 enough energy (its energy should be greater than a fixed
321 treshold $E_{th}$) to stay active during the next sensing phase. If yes, it
322 exchanges information with all the other nodes belonging to the same subregion:
323 it collects from each node its position coordinates, remaining energy ($RE_j$),
324 ID, and the number of one-hop neighbors still alive. INFO
325 packet contains two parts: header and payload data. The sensor ID is included
326 in the header, where the header size is 8 bits. The data part includes
327 position coordinates (64 bits), remaining energy (32 bits), and the number of
328 one-hop live neighbors (8 bits). Therefore the size of the INFO packet is 112
329 bits. Once the first phase is completed, the nodes of a subregion choose a
330 leader to take the decision based on the following criteria with decreasing
331 importance: larger number of neighbors, larger remaining energy, and then in
332 case of equality, larger index. After that, if the sensor node is leader, it
333 will solve an integer program (see Section~\ref{cp}). This
334 integer program contains boolean variables $X_j$ where ($X_j=1$) means that
335 sensor $j$ will be active in the next sensing phase. Only sensors with enough
336 remaining energy are involved in the integer program ($J$ is the set of all
337 sensors involved). As the leader consumes energy (computation energy is
338 denoted by $E^{comp}$) to solve the optimization problem, it will be included
339 in the integer program only if it has enough energy to achieve the computation
340 and to stay alive during the next sensing phase, that is to say if $RE_j >
341 E^{comp}+E_{th}$. Once the optimization problem is solved, each leader will
342 send an ActiveSleep packet to each sensor in the same subregion to indicate it
343 if it has to be active or not. Otherwise, if the sensor is not the leader, it
344 will wait for the ActiveSleep packet to know its state for the coming sensing
346 %which provides a set of sensors planned to be
347 %active in the next sensing phase.
349 \begin{algorithm}[h!]
352 %\emph{Initialize the sensor node and determine it's position and subregion} \;
354 \If{ $RE_j \geq E_{th}$ }{
355 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
356 \emph{Send $INFO()$ packet to other nodes in the subregion}\;
357 \emph{Wait $INFO()$ packet from other nodes in the subregion}\;
358 %\emph{UPDATE $RE_j$ for every sent or received INFO Packet}\;
359 %\emph{ Collect information and construct the list L for all nodes in the subregion}\;
361 %\If{ the received INFO Packet = No. of nodes in it's subregion -1 }{
362 \emph{LeaderID = Leader election}\;
363 \If{$ s_j.ID = LeaderID $}{
364 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMPUTATION}\;
365 \emph{$\left\{\left(X_{1},\dots,X_{k},\dots,X_{J}\right)\right\}$ =
366 Execute Integer Program Algorithm($J$)}\;
367 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
368 \emph{Send $ActiveSleep()$ to each node $k$ in subregion} \;
369 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
372 \emph{$s_j.status$ = LISTENING}\;
373 \emph{Wait $ActiveSleep()$ packet from the Leader}\;
375 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
379 \Else { Exclude $s_j$ from entering in the current sensing phase}
382 \caption{DiLCO($s_j$)}
387 \section{\uppercase{Coverage problem formulation}}
391 We formulate the coverage optimization problem with an integer program.
392 The objective function consists in minimizing the undercoverage and the overcoverage of the area as suggested in \cite{pedraza2006}.
393 The area coverage problem is expressed as the coverage of a fraction of points called primary points.
394 Details on the choice and the number of primary points can be found in \cite{idrees2014coverage}. The set of primary points is denoted by $P$
395 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 $p$ :
397 \Theta_{p} = \left \{
399 0 & \mbox{if the primary point}\\
400 & \mbox{$p$ is not covered,}\\
401 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
405 More precisely, $\Theta_{p}$ represents the number of active sensor
406 nodes minus one that cover the primary point~$p$.
407 In the same way, we define the undercoverage variable
408 $U_{p}$ of the primary point $p$ as:
412 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered,} \\
413 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
417 There is, of course, a relationship between the three variables $X_j$, $\Theta_p$, and $U_p$ which can be formulated as follows :
419 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, \forall p \in P
421 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.
422 On the contrary, if the point $p$ is covered, $U_p=0$, and $\Theta_{p}=\left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} \right)- 1$.
423 \noindent Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows:
424 \begin{equation} \label{eq:ip2r}
427 \min \sum_{p \in P} (w_{\theta} \Theta_{p} + w_{U} U_{p})&\\
428 \textrm{subject to :}&\\
429 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, &\forall p \in P\\
431 %\sum_{t \in T} X_{j,t} \leq \frac{RE_j}{e_t} &\forall j \in J \\
433 \Theta_{p}\in \mathbb{N}, &\forall p \in P\\
434 U_{p} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall p \in P \\
435 X_{j} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall j \in J
439 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. By
440 choosing $w_{U}$ much larger than $w_{\theta}$, the coverage of a
441 maximum of primary points is ensured. Then for the same number of covered
442 primary points, the solution with a minimal number of active sensors is
444 %Both weights $w_\theta$ and $w_U$ must be carefully chosen in
445 %order to guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each
451 \indent Our model is based on the model proposed by \cite{pedraza2006} where the
452 objective is to find a maximum number of disjoint cover sets. To accomplish
453 this goal, the authors proposed an integer program which forces undercoverage
454 and overcoverage of targets to become minimal at the same time. They use binary
455 variables $x_{jl}$ to indicate if sensor $j$ belongs to cover set $l$. In our
456 model, we consider that the binary variable $X_{j}$ determines the activation of
457 sensor $j$ in the sensing phase. We also consider primary points as targets.
458 The set of primary points is denoted by $P$ and the set of sensors by $J$.
460 \noindent Let $\alpha_{jp}$ denote the indicator function of whether the primary
461 point $p$ is covered, that is:
463 \alpha_{jp} = \left \{
465 1 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$ is covered} \\
466 & \mbox{by sensor node $j$}, \\
467 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
471 The number of active sensors that cover the primary point $p$ can then be
472 computed by $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j}$ where:
476 1& \mbox{if sensor $j$ is active,} \\
477 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
481 We define the Overcoverage variable $\Theta_{p}$ as:
483 \Theta_{p} = \left \{
485 0 & \mbox{if the primary point}\\
486 & \mbox{$p$ is not covered,}\\
487 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
491 \noindent More precisely, $\Theta_{p}$ represents the number of active sensor
492 nodes minus one that cover the primary point~$p$. The Undercoverage variable
493 $U_{p}$ of the primary point $p$ is defined by:
497 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered,} \\
498 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
503 \noindent Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows:
504 \begin{equation} \label{eq:ip2r}
507 \min \sum_{p \in P} (w_{\theta} \Theta_{p} + w_{U} U_{p})&\\
508 \textrm{subject to :}&\\
509 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, &\forall p \in P\\
511 %\sum_{t \in T} X_{j,t} \leq \frac{RE_j}{e_t} &\forall j \in J \\
513 \Theta_{p}\in \mathbb{N}, &\forall p \in P\\
514 U_{p} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall p \in P \\
515 X_{j} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall j \in J
521 \item $X_{j}$ : indicates whether or not the sensor $j$ is actively sensing (1
522 if yes and 0 if not);
523 \item $\Theta_{p}$ : {\it overcoverage}, the number of sensors minus one that
524 are covering the primary point $p$;
525 \item $U_{p}$ : {\it undercoverage}, indicates whether or not the primary point
526 $p$ is being covered (1 if not covered and 0 if covered).
529 The first group of constraints indicates that some primary point $p$ should be
530 covered by at least one sensor and, if it is not always the case, overcoverage
531 and undercoverage variables help balancing the restriction equations by taking
532 positive values. Two objectives can be noticed in our model. First, we limit the
533 overcoverage of primary points to activate as few sensors as possible. Second,
534 to avoid a lack of area monitoring in a subregion we minimize the
535 undercoverage. Both weights $w_\theta$ and $w_U$ must be carefully chosen in
536 order to guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each
541 \section{\uppercase{Protocol evaluation}}
542 \label{sec:Simulation Results and Analysis}
543 \noindent \subsection{Simulation framework}
545 To assess the performance of our DiLCO protocol, we have used the discrete
546 event simulator OMNeT++ \cite{varga} to run different series of simulations.
547 Table~\ref{table3} gives the chosen parameters setting.
550 \caption{Relevant parameters for network initializing.}
553 % used for centering table
555 % centered columns (4 columns)
557 %inserts double horizontal lines
558 Parameter & Value \\ [0.5ex]
560 %Case & Strategy (with Two Leaders) & Strategy (with One Leader) & Simple Heuristic \\ [0.5ex]
564 % inserts single horizontal line
565 Sensing Field & $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ \\
566 % inserting body of the table
568 Nodes Number & 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250~nodes \\
570 Initial Energy & 500-700~joules \\
572 Sensing Period & 60 Minutes \\
573 $E_{th}$ & 36 Joules\\
577 % [1ex] adds vertical space
583 % is used to refer this table in the text
586 Simulations with five different node densities going from 50 to 250~nodes were
587 performed considering each time 25~randomly generated networks, to obtain
588 experimental results which are relevant. The nodes are deployed on a field of
589 interest of $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ in such a way that they cover the field with a
592 We chose as energy consumption model the one proposed proposed by~\cite{ChinhVu}
593 and based on ~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} with slight modifications. The energy
594 consumed by the communications is added and the part relative to a variable
595 sensing range is removed. We also assume that the nodes have the characteristics
596 of the Medusa II sensor node platform \cite{raghunathan2002energy}. A sensor
597 node typically consists of four units: a MicroController Unit, an Atmels AVR
598 ATmega103L in case of Medusa II, to perform the computations; a communication
599 (radio) unit able to send and receive messages; a sensing unit to collect data;
600 a power supply which provides the energy consumed by node. Except the battery,
601 all the other unit can be switched off to save energy according to the node
602 status. Table~\ref{table4} summarizes the energy consumed (in milliWatt per
603 second) by a node for each of its possible status.
606 \caption{Energy consumption model}
609 % used for centering table
611 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}
612 % centered columns (4 columns)
614 %inserts double horizontal lines
615 Sensor status & MCU & Radio & Sensing & Power (mW) \\ [0.5ex]
617 % inserts single horizontal line
618 Listening & ON & ON & ON & 20.05 \\
619 % inserting body of the table
621 Active & ON & OFF & ON & 9.72 \\
623 Sleep & OFF & OFF & OFF & 0.02 \\
625 Computation & ON & ON & ON & 26.83 \\
627 %\multicolumn{4}{|c|}{Energy needed to send/receive a 1-bit} & 0.2575\\
633 % is used to refer this table in the text
636 Less influent energy consumption sources like when turning on the radio,
637 starting the sensor node, changing the status of a node, etc., will be neglected
638 for the sake of simplicity. Each node saves energy by switching off its radio
639 once it has received its decision status from the corresponding leader (it can
640 be itself). As explained previously in subsection~\ref{main_idea}, two kinds of
641 packets for communication are considered in our protocol: INFO packet and
642 ActiveSleep packet. To compute the energy needed by a node to transmit or
643 receive such packets, we use the equation giving the energy spent to send a
644 1-bit-content message defined in~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} (we assume
645 symmetric communication costs), and we set their respective size to 112 and
646 24~bits. The energy required to send or receive a 1-bit-content message is thus
649 Each node has an initial energy level, in Joules, which is randomly drawn in
650 $[500-700]$. If its energy provision reaches a value below the threshold
651 $E_{th}=36$~Joules, the minimum energy needed for a node to stay active during
652 one period, it will no longer take part in the coverage task. This value
653 corresponds to the energy needed by the sensing phase, obtained by multiplying
654 the energy consumed in active state (9.72 mW) by the time in seconds for one
655 period (3,600 seconds), and adding the energy for the pre-sensing phases.
656 According to the interval of initial energy, a sensor may be active during at
659 In the simulations, we introduce the following performance metrics to evaluate
660 the efficiency of our approach:
662 %\begin{enumerate}[i)]
664 \item {{\bf Network Lifetime}:} we define the network lifetime as the time until
665 the coverage ratio drops below a predefined threshold. We denote by
666 $Lifetime_{95}$ (respectively $Lifetime_{50}$) the amount of time during which
667 the network can satisfy an area coverage greater than $95\%$ (respectively
668 $50\%$). We assume that the sensor network can fulfill its task until all its
669 nodes have been drained of their energy or it becomes disconnected. Network
670 connectivity is crucial because an active sensor node without connectivity
671 towards a base station cannot transmit any information regarding an observed
672 event in the area that it monitors.
674 \item {{\bf Coverage Ratio (CR)}:} it measures how well the WSN is able to
675 observe the area of interest. In our case, we discretized the sensor field
676 as a regular grid, which yields the following equation to compute the
680 \mbox{CR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{$n$}}{\mbox{$N$}} \times 100.
682 where $n$ is the number of covered grid points by active sensors of every
683 subregions during the current sensing phase and $N$ is the total number of grid
684 points in the sensing field. In our simulations, we have a layout of $N = 51
685 \times 26 = 1326$ grid points.
687 \item {{\bf Energy Consumption}:} energy consumption (EC) can be seen as the
688 total amount of energy consumed by the sensors during $Lifetime_{95}$
689 or $Lifetime_{50}$, divided by the number of periods. Formally, the computation
690 of EC can be expressed as follows:
693 \mbox{EC} = \frac{\sum\limits_{m=1}^{M} \left( E^{\mbox{com}}_m+E^{\mbox{list}}_m+E^{\mbox{comp}}_m
694 + E^{a}_m+E^{s}_m \right)}{M},
697 where $M$ corresponds to the number of periods. The total amount of energy
698 consumed by the sensors (EC) comes through taking into consideration four main
699 energy factors. The first one, denoted $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{com}}_m$,
700 represents the energy consumption spent by all the nodes for wireless
701 communications during period $m$. $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{list}}_m$, the next
702 factor, corresponds to the energy consumed by the sensors in LISTENING status
703 before receiving the decision to go active or sleep in period $m$.
704 $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{comp}}_m$ refers to the energy needed by all the leader
705 nodes to solve the integer program during a period. Finally, $E^a_{m}$ and
706 $E^s_{m}$ indicate the energy consumed by the whole network in the sensing phase
707 (active and sleeping nodes).
712 %\subsection{Performance Analysis for different subregions}
713 \subsection{Performance analysis}
716 In this subsection, we first focus on the performance of our DiLCO protocol for
717 different numbers of subregions. We consider partitions of the WSN area into
718 $2$, $4$, $8$, $16$, and $32$ subregions. Thus the DiLCO protocol is declined in
719 five versions: DiLCO-2, DiLCO-4, DiLCO-8, DiLCO-16, and DiLCO-32. Simulations
720 without partitioning the area of interest, cases which correspond to a
721 centralized approach, are not presented because they require high execution
722 times to solve the integer program and therefore consume too much energy.
724 We compare our protocol to two other approaches. The first one, called DESK and
725 proposed by ~\cite{ChinhVu} is a fully distributed coverage algorithm. The
726 second one, called GAF ~\cite{xu2001geography}, consists in dividing the region
727 into fixed squares. During the decision phase, in each square, one sensor is
728 chosen to remain active during the sensing phase.
730 \subsubsection{Coverage ratio}
732 Figure~\ref{fig3} shows the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes. It
733 can be seen that both DESK and GAF provide a coverage ratio which is slightly
734 better compared to DiLCO in the first thirty periods. This can be easily
735 explained by the number of active nodes: the optimization process of our
736 protocol activates less nodes than DESK or GAF, resulting in a slight decrease
737 of the coverage ratio. In case of DiLCO-2 (respectively DiLCO-4), the coverage
738 ratio exhibits a fast decrease with the number of periods and reaches zero value
739 in period~18 (respectively 46), whereas the other versions of DiLCO, DESK, and
740 GAF ensure a coverage ratio above 50\% for subsequent periods. We believe that
741 the results obtained with these two methods can be explained by a high
742 consumption of energy and we will check this assumption in the next subsection.
744 Concerning DiLCO-8, DiLCO-16, and DiLCO-32, these methods seem to be more
745 efficient than DESK and GAF, since they can provide the same level of coverage
746 (except in the first periods where DESK and GAF slightly outperform them) for a
747 greater number of periods. In fact, when our protocol is applied with a large
748 number of subregions (from 8 to 32~regions), it activates a restricted number of
749 nodes, and thus enables the extension of the network lifetime.
754 \includegraphics[scale=0.475] {CR.pdf}
755 \caption{Coverage ratio}
760 \subsubsection{Energy consumption}
762 Based on the results shown in Figure~\ref{fig3}, we focus on the DiLCO-16 and
763 DiLCO-32 versions of our protocol, and we compare their energy consumption with
764 the DESK and GAF approaches. For each sensor node we measure the energy consumed
765 according to its successive status, for different network densities. We denote
766 by $\mbox{\it Protocol}/50$ (respectively $\mbox{\it Protocol}/95$) the amount
767 of energy consumed while the area coverage is greater than $50\%$ (repectively
768 $95\%$), where {\it Protocol} is one of the four protocols we compare.
769 Figure~\ref{fig95} presents the energy consumptions observed for network sizes
770 going from 50 to 250~nodes. Let us notice that the same network sizes will be
771 used for the different performance metrics.
775 \includegraphics[scale=0.475]{EC.pdf}
776 \caption{Energy consumption per period}
780 The results depict the good performance of the different versions of our
781 protocol. Indeed, the protocols DiLCO-16/50, DiLCO-32/50, DiLCO-16/95, and
782 DiLCO-32/95 consume less energy than their DESK and GAF counterparts for a
783 similar level of area coverage. This observation reflects the larger number of
784 nodes set active by DESK and GAF.
786 Now, if we consider a same protocol, we can notice that the average consumption
787 per period increases slightly for our protocol when increasing the level of
788 coverage and the number of node, whereas it increases more largely for DESK and
789 GAF. In case of DiLCO, it means that even if a larger network allows to improve
790 the number of periods with a minimum coverage level value, this improvement has
791 a higher energy cost per period due to communication overhead and a more
792 difficult optimization problem. However, in comparison with DESK and GAF, our
793 approach has a reasonable energy overcost.
795 \subsubsection{Execution time}
797 Another interesting point to investigate is the evolution of the execution time
798 with the size of the WSN and the number of subregions. Therefore, we report for
799 every version of our protocol the average execution times in seconds needed to
800 solve the optimization problem for different WSN sizes. The execution times are
801 obtained on a laptop DELL which has an Intel Core~i3~2370~M~(2.4~GHz) dual core
802 processor and a MIPS rating equal to 35330. The corresponding execution times on
803 a MEDUSA II sensor node are then extrapolated according to the MIPS rate of the
804 Atmels AVR ATmega103L microcontroller (6~MHz), which is equal to 6, by
805 multiplying the laptop times by $\left(\frac{35330}{2} \times
806 \frac{1}{6}\right)$. The expected times on a sensor node are reported on
811 \includegraphics[scale=0.475]{T.pdf}
812 \caption{Execution time in seconds}
816 Figure~\ref{fig8} shows that DiLCO-32 has very low execution times in comparison
817 with other DiLCO versions, because the activity scheduling is tackled by a
818 larger number of leaders and each leader solves an integer problem with a
819 limited number of variables and constraints. Conversely, DiLCO-2 requires to
820 solve an optimization problem with half of the network nodes and thus presents a
821 high execution time. Nevertheless if we refer to Figure~\ref{fig3}, we observe
822 that DiLCO-32 is slightly less efficient than DilCO-16 to maintain as long as
823 possible high coverage. In fact an excessive subdivision of the area of interest
824 prevents it to ensure a good coverage especially on the borders of the
825 subregions. Thus, the optimal number of subregions can be seen as a trade-off
826 between execution time and coverage performance.
828 \subsubsection{Network lifetime}
830 In the next figure, the network lifetime is illustrated. Obviously, the lifetime
831 increases with the network size, whatever the considered protocol, since the
832 correlated node density also increases. A high network density means a high
833 node redundancy which allows to turn-off many nodes and thus to prolong the
838 \includegraphics[scale=0.475]{LT.pdf}
839 \caption{Network lifetime}
843 As highlighted by Figure~\ref{figLT95}, when the coverage level is relaxed
844 ($50\%$) the network lifetime also improves. This observation reflects the fact
845 that the higher the coverage performance, the more nodes must be active to
846 ensure the wider monitoring. For a similar level of coverage, DiLCO outperforms
847 DESK and GAF for the lifetime of the network. More specifically, if we focus on
848 the larger level of coverage ($95\%$) in the case of our protocol, the
849 subdivision in $16$~subregions seems to be the most appropriate.
852 \section{\uppercase{Conclusion and future work}}
853 \label{sec:Conclusion and Future Works}
855 A crucial problem in WSN is to schedule the sensing activities of the different
856 nodes in order to ensure both coverage of the area of interest and longer
857 network lifetime. The inherent limitations of sensor nodes, in energy provision,
858 communication and computing capacities, require protocols that optimize the use
859 of the available resources to fulfill the sensing task. To address this
860 problem, this paper proposes a two-step approach. Firstly, the field of sensing
861 is divided into smaller subregions using the concept of divide-and-conquer
862 method. Secondly, a distributed protocol called Distributed Lifetime Coverage
863 Optimization is applied in each subregion to optimize the coverage and lifetime
864 performances. In a subregion, our protocol consists in electing a leader node
865 which will then perform a sensor activity scheduling. The challenges include how
866 to select the most efficient leader in each subregion and the best
867 representative set of active nodes to ensure a high level of coverage. To assess
868 the performance of our approach, we compared it with two other approaches using
869 many performance metrics like coverage ratio or network lifetime. We have also
870 studied the impact of the number of subregions chosen to subdivide the area of
871 interest, considering different network sizes. The experiments show that
872 increasing the number of subregions improves the lifetime. The more subregions
873 there are, the more robust the network is against random disconnection resulting
874 from dead nodes. However, for a given sensing field and network size there is
875 an optimal number of subregions. Therefore, in case of our simulation context a
876 subdivision in $16$~subregions seems to be the most relevant. The optimal number
877 of subregions will be investigated in the future.
879 \section*{\uppercase{Acknowledgements}}
881 \noindent As a Ph.D. student, Ali Kadhum IDREES would like to gratefully
882 acknowledge the University of Babylon - IRAQ for the financial support and
883 Campus France for the received support. This paper is also partially funded by
884 the Labex ACTION program (contract ANR-11-LABX-01-01).
887 \bibliographystyle{plain}
889 \bibliography{biblio}}