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27 %\title{Authors' Instructions \subtitle{Preparation of Camera-Ready Contributions to SCITEPRESS Proceedings} }
29 \title{Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks}
31 \author{Ali Kadhum Idrees$^{a,b}$, Karine Deschinkel$^{a}$,\\ Michel Salomon$^{a}$, and Rapha\"el Couturier$^{a}$\\
32 $^{a}$FEMTO-ST Institute, UMR 6174 CNRS, \\ University Bourgogne Franche-Comt\'e, Belfort, France\\
33 $^{b}${\em{Department of Computer Science, University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq}}\\
34 email: ali.idness@edu.univ-fcomte.fr,\\ $\lbrace$karine.deschinkel, michel.salomon, raphael.couturier$\rbrace$@univ-fcomte.fr}
36 %\author{Ali Kadhum Idrees$^{a,b}$, Karine Deschinkel$^{a}$,\\ Michel Salomon$^{a}$, and Rapha\"el Couturier $^{a}$ \\
37 %$^{a}${\em{FEMTO-ST Institute, UMR 6174 CNRS, University Bourgogne Franche-Comt\'e,\\ Belfort, France}} \\
38 %$^{b}${\em{Department of Computer Science, University of Babylon, Babylon, Iraq}} }
42 %\keywords{Wireless Sensor Networks, Area Coverage, Network lifetime,Optimization, Scheduling.}
44 \abstract{ One of the main research challenges faced in Wireless Sensor Networks
45 (WSNs) is to preserve continuously and effectively the coverage of an area (or
46 region) of interest to be monitored, while simultaneously preventing as much
47 as possible a network failure due to battery-depleted nodes. In this paper we
48 propose a protocol, called Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization protocol
49 (DiLCO), which maintains the coverage and improves the lifetime of a wireless
50 sensor network. First, we partition the area of interest into subregions using
51 a classical divide-and-conquer method. Our DiLCO protocol is then distributed
52 on the sensor nodes in each subregion in a second step. To fulfill our
53 objective, the proposed protocol combines two effective techniques: a leader
54 election in each subregion, followed by an optimization-based node activity
55 scheduling performed by each elected leader. This two-step process takes
56 place periodically, in order to choose a small set of nodes remaining active
57 for sensing during a time slot. Each set is built to ensure coverage at a low
58 energy cost, allowing to optimize the network lifetime.
60 %period consists of four phases: (i)~Information Exchange, (ii)~Leader
61 %Election, (iii)~Decision, and (iv)~Sensing. The decision process, which
62 % results in an activity scheduling vector, is carried out by a leader node
63 % through the solving of an integer program.
65 Simulations are conducted using the discret event simulator
66 OMNET++. We refer to the characterictics of a Medusa II sensor for
67 the energy consumption and the computation time. In comparison with
68 two other existing methods, our approach is able to increase the WSN
69 lifetime and provides improved coverage performance. }
77 \section{\uppercase{Introduction}}
78 \label{sec:introduction}
81 Energy efficiency is a crucial issue in wireless sensor networks since sensory
82 consumption, in order to maximize the network lifetime, represents the major
83 difficulty when designing WSNs. As a consequence, one of the scientific research
84 challenges in WSNs, which has been addressed by a large amount of literature
85 during the last few years, is the design of energy efficient approaches for
86 coverage and connectivity~\cite{conti2014mobile}. Coverage reflects how well a
87 sensor field is monitored. On the one hand we want to monitor the area of
88 interest in the most efficient way~\cite{Nayak04}. On the other hand we want to
89 use as little energy as possible. Sensor nodes are battery-powered with no
90 means of recharging or replacing, usually due to environmental (hostile or
91 unpractical environments) or cost reasons. Therefore, it is desired that the
92 WSNs are deployed with high densities so as to exploit the overlapping sensing
93 regions of some sensor nodes to save energy by turning off some of them during
94 the sensing phase to prolong the network lifetime. \textcolor{blue}{A WSN can use various types of sensors such as \cite{ref17,ref19}: thermal, seismic, magnetic, visual, infrared, acoustic, and radar. These sensors are capable of observing different physical conditions such as: temperature, humidity, pressure, speed, direction, movement, light, soil makeup, noise levels, presence or absence of certain kinds of objects, and mechanical stress levels on attached objects. Consequently, a wide range of WSN applications such as~\cite{ref22}: health-care, environment, agriculture, public safety, military, transportation 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
111 to 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 approaches (a distributed one, DESK ~\cite{ChinhVu}, and a centralized
120 one called GAF ~\cite{xu2001geography}) in order to compare their performances
121 with our approach. We also focus on performance analysis based on the number of
125 The remainder of the paper continues with Section~\ref{sec:Literature Review}
126 where a review of some related works is presented. The next section describes
127 the DiLCO protocol, followed in Section~\ref{cp} by the coverage model
128 formulation which is used to schedule the activation of
129 sensors. Section~\ref{sec:Simulation Results and Analysis} shows the simulation
130 results. The paper ends with a conclusion and some suggestions for further work
131 in Section~\ref{sec:Conclusion and Future Works}.
133 \section{\uppercase{Literature Review}}
134 \label{sec:Literature Review}
136 \noindent In this section, we summarize some related works regarding the
137 coverage problem and distinguish our DiLCO protocol from the works presented in
140 The most discussed coverage problems in literature can be classified into three
141 types \cite{li2013survey}: area coverage \cite{Misra} where every point inside
142 an area is to be monitored, target coverage \cite{yang2014novel} where the main
143 objective is to cover only a finite number of discrete points called targets,
144 and barrier coverage \cite{Kumar:2005}\cite{kim2013maximum} to prevent intruders
145 from entering into the region of interest. In \cite{Deng2012} authors transform
146 the area coverage problem to the target coverage problem taking into account the
147 intersection points among disks of sensors nodes or between disk of sensor nodes
148 and boundaries. {\it In DiLCO protocol, the area coverage, i.e. the coverage of
149 every point in the sensing region, is transformed to the coverage of a
150 fraction of points called primary points. }
152 The major approach to extend network lifetime while preserving coverage is to
153 divide/organize the sensors into a suitable number of set covers (disjoint or
154 non-disjoint), where each set completely covers a region of interest, and to
155 activate these set covers successively. The network activity can be planned in
156 advance and scheduled for the entire network lifetime or organized in periods,
157 and the set of active sensor nodes is decided at the beginning of each period
158 \cite{ling2009energy}. Active node selection is determined based on the problem
159 requirements (e.g. area monitoring, connectivity, power efficiency). For
160 instance, Jaggi et al. \cite{jaggi2006} address the problem of maximizing
161 network lifetime by dividing sensors into the maximum number of disjoint subsets
162 such that each subset can ensure both coverage and connectivity. A greedy
163 algorithm is applied once to solve this problem and the computed sets are
164 activated in succession to achieve the desired network lifetime. Vu
165 \cite{chin2007}, Padmatvathy et al. \cite{pc10}, propose algorithms working in a
166 periodic fashion where a cover set is computed at the beginning of each period.
167 {\it Motivated by these works, DiLCO protocol works in periods, where each
168 period contains a preliminary phase for information exchange and decisions,
169 followed by a sensing phase where one cover set is in charge of the sensing
172 Various approaches, including centralized, or distributed algorithms, have been
173 proposed to extend the network lifetime. In distributed
174 algorithms~\cite{yangnovel,ChinhVu,qu2013distributed}, information is
175 disseminated throughout the network and sensors decide cooperatively by
176 communicating with their neighbors which of them will remain in sleep mode for a
177 certain period of time. The centralized
178 algorithms~\cite{cardei2005improving,zorbas2010solving,pujari2011high} always
179 provide nearly or close to optimal solution since the algorithm has global view
180 of the whole network. But such a method has the disadvantage of requiring high
181 communication costs, since the node (located at the base station) making the
182 decision needs information from all the sensor nodes in the area and the amount
183 of information can be huge. {\it In order to be suitable for large-scale
184 network, in the DiLCO protocol, the area coverage is divided into several
185 smaller subregions, and in each one, a node called the leader is in charge for
186 selecting the active sensors for the current period.}
188 A large variety of coverage scheduling algorithms has been developed. Many of
189 the existing algorithms, dealing with the maximization of the number of cover
190 sets, are heuristics. These heuristics involve the construction of a cover set
191 by including in priority the sensor nodes which cover critical targets, that is
192 to say targets that are covered by the smallest number of sensors
193 \cite{berman04,zorbas2010solving}. Other approaches are based on mathematical
194 programming formulations~\cite{cardei2005energy,5714480,pujari2011high,Yang2014}
195 and dedicated techniques (solving with a branch-and-bound algorithms available
196 in optimization solver). The problem is formulated as an optimization problem
197 (maximization of the lifetime or number of cover sets) under target coverage and
198 energy constraints. Column generation techniques, well-known and widely
199 practiced techniques for solving linear programs with too many variables, have
201 used~\cite{castano2013column,rossi2012exact,deschinkel2012column}. {\it In DiLCO
202 protocol, each leader, in each subregion, solves an integer program with a
203 double objective consisting in minimizing the overcoverage and limiting the
204 undercoverage. This program is inspired from the work of \cite{pedraza2006}
205 where the objective is to maximize the number of cover sets.}
207 \section{\uppercase{Description of the DiLCO protocol}}
208 \label{sec:The DiLCO Protocol Description}
210 \noindent In this section, we introduce the DiLCO protocol which is distributed
211 on each subregion in the area of interest. It is based on two efficient
212 techniques: network leader election and sensor activity scheduling for coverage
213 preservation and energy conservation, applied periodically to efficiently
214 maximize the lifetime in the network.
216 \subsection{Assumptions and models}
218 \noindent We consider a sensor network composed of static nodes distributed
219 independently and uniformly at random. A high density deployment ensures a high
220 coverage ratio of the interested area at the start. The nodes are supposed to
221 have homogeneous characteristics from a communication and a processing point of
222 view, whereas they have heterogeneous energy provisions. Each node has access
223 to its location thanks, either to a hardware component (like a GPS unit), or a
224 location discovery algorithm.
226 \indent We consider a boolean disk coverage model which is the most widely used
227 sensor coverage model in the literature. Thus, since a sensor has a constant
228 sensing range $R_s$, every space points within a disk centered at a sensor with
229 the radius of the sensing range is said to be covered by this sensor. We also
230 assume that the communication range $R_c \geq 2R_s$. In fact, Zhang and
231 Hou~\cite{Zhang05} proved that if the transmission range fulfills the previous
232 hypothesis, a complete coverage of a convex area implies connectivity among the
233 working nodes in the active mode.
235 \indent For each sensor we also define a set of points called primary
236 points~\cite{idrees2014coverage} to approximate the area coverage it provides,
237 rather than working with a continuous coverage. Thus, a sensing disk
238 corresponding to a sensor node is covered by its neighboring nodes if all its
239 primary points are covered. Obviously, the approximation of coverage is more or
240 less accurate according to the number of primary points.
243 \subsection{Main idea}
245 \noindent We start by applying a divide-and-conquer algorithm to partition the
246 area of interest into smaller areas called subregions and then our protocol is
247 executed simultaneously in each subregion.
251 \includegraphics[width=75mm]{FirstModel.pdf} % 70mm
252 \caption{DiLCO protocol}
256 As shown in Figure~\ref{fig2}, the proposed DiLCO protocol is a periodic
257 protocol where each period is decomposed into 4~phases: Information Exchange,
258 Leader Election, Decision, and Sensing. For each period there will be exactly
259 one cover set in charge of the sensing task. A periodic scheduling is
260 interesting because it enhances the robustness of the network against node failures. \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}. First, a node that has not enough energy to complete a period, or
261 which fails before the decision is taken, will be excluded from the scheduling
262 process. Second, if a node fails later, whereas it was supposed to sense the
263 region of interest, it will only affect the quality of the coverage until the
264 definition of a new cover set in the next period. Constraints, like energy
265 consumption, can be easily taken into consideration since the sensors can update
266 and exchange their information during the first phase. Let us notice that the
267 phases before the sensing one (Information Exchange, Leader Election, and
268 Decision) are energy consuming for all the nodes, even nodes that will not be
269 retained by the leader to keep watch over the corresponding area.
271 During the execution of the DiLCO protocol, two kinds of packet will be used:
272 %\begin{enumerate}[(a)]
274 \item INFO packet: sent by each sensor node to all the nodes inside a same
275 subregion for information exchange.
276 \item ActiveSleep packet: sent by the leader to all the nodes in its subregion
277 to inform them to stay Active or to go Sleep during the sensing phase.
280 and each sensor node will have five possible status in the network:
281 %\begin{enumerate}[(a)]
283 \item LISTENING: sensor is waiting for a decision (to be active or not);
284 \item COMPUTATION: sensor applies the optimization process as leader;
285 \item ACTIVE: sensor is active;
286 \item SLEEP: sensor is turned off;
287 \item COMMUNICATION: sensor is transmitting or receiving packet.
291 An outline of the protocol implementation is given by Algorithm~\ref{alg:DiLCO}
292 which describes the execution of a period by a node (denoted by $s_j$ for a
293 sensor node indexed by $j$). At the beginning a node checks whether it has
294 enough energy to stay active during the next sensing phase. If yes, it exchanges
295 information with all the other nodes belonging to the same subregion: it
296 collects from each node its position coordinates, remaining energy ($RE_j$), ID,
297 and the number of one-hop neighbors still alive. Once the first phase is
298 completed, the nodes of a subregion choose a leader to take the decision based
299 on the following criteria with decreasing importance: larger number of
300 neighbors, larger remaining energy, and then in case of equality, larger index.
301 After that, if the sensor node is leader, it will execute the integer program
302 algorithm (see Section~\ref{cp}) which provides a set of sensors planned to be
303 active in the next sensing phase. As leader, it will send an Active-Sleep packet
304 to each sensor in the same subregion to indicate it if it has to be active or
305 not. Alternately, if the sensor is not the leader, it will wait for the
306 Active-Sleep packet to know its state for the coming sensing phase.
309 \begin{algorithm}[h!]
312 %\emph{Initialize the sensor node and determine it's position and subregion} \;
314 \If{ $RE_j \geq E_{th}$ }{
315 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
316 \emph{Send $INFO()$ packet to other nodes in the subregion}\;
317 \emph{Wait $INFO()$ packet from other nodes in the subregion}\;
318 %\emph{UPDATE $RE_j$ for every sent or received INFO Packet}\;
319 %\emph{ Collect information and construct the list L for all nodes in the subregion}\;
321 %\If{ the received INFO Packet = No. of nodes in it's subregion -1 }{
322 \emph{LeaderID = Leader election}\;
323 \If{$ s_j.ID = LeaderID $}{
324 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMPUTATION}\;
325 \emph{$\left\{\left(X_{1},\dots,X_{k},\dots,X_{J}\right)\right\}$ =
326 Execute Integer Program Algorithm($J$)}\;
327 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
328 \emph{Send $ActiveSleep()$ to each node $k$ in subregion} \;
329 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
332 \emph{$s_j.status$ = LISTENING}\;
333 \emph{Wait $ActiveSleep()$ packet from the Leader}\;
335 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
339 \Else { Exclude $s_j$ from entering in the current sensing phase}
342 \caption{DiLCO($s_j$)}
347 \section{\uppercase{Coverage problem formulation}}
351 We formulate the coverage optimization problem with an integer program.
352 The objective function consists in minimizing the undercoverage and the overcoverage of the area as suggested in \cite{pedraza2006}.
353 The area coverage problem is expressed as the coverage of a fraction of points called primary points.
354 Details on the choice and the number of primary points can be found in \cite{idrees2014coverage}. The set of primary points is denoted by $P$
355 and the set of 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 $p$ :
357 \Theta_{p} = \left \{
359 0 & \mbox{if the primary point}\\
360 & \mbox{$p$ is not covered,}\\
361 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
365 More precisely, $\Theta_{p}$ represents the number of active sensor
366 nodes minus one that cover the primary point~$p$.
367 In the same way, we define the undercoverage variable
368 $U_{p}$ of the primary point $p$ as:
372 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered,} \\
373 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
377 There is, of course, a relationship between the three variables $X_j$, $\Theta_p$, and $U_p$ which can be formulated as follows :
379 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, \forall p \in P
381 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.
382 On the contrary, if the point $p$ is covered, $U_p=0$, and $\Theta_{p}=\left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} \right)- 1$.
383 \noindent Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows:
384 \begin{equation} \label{eq:ip2r}
387 \min \sum_{p \in P} (w_{\theta} \Theta_{p} + w_{U} U_{p})&\\
388 \textrm{subject to :}&\\
389 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, &\forall p \in P\\
391 %\sum_{t \in T} X_{j,t} \leq \frac{RE_j}{e_t} &\forall j \in J \\
393 \Theta_{p}\in \mathbb{N}, &\forall p \in P\\
394 U_{p} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall p \in P \\
395 X_{j} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall j \in J
399 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. Both weights $w_\theta$ and $w_U$ must be carefully chosen in
400 order to guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each
412 \indent Our model is based on the model proposed by \cite{pedraza2006} where the
413 objective is to find a maximum number of disjoint cover sets. To accomplish
414 this goal, the authors proposed an integer program which forces undercoverage
415 and overcoverage of targets to become minimal at the same time. They use binary
416 variables $x_{jl}$ to indicate if sensor $j$ belongs to cover set $l$. In our
417 model, we consider that the binary variable $X_{j}$ determines the activation of
418 sensor $j$ in the sensing phase. We also consider primary points as targets.
419 The set of primary points is denoted by $P$ and the set of sensors by $J$.
421 \noindent Let $\alpha_{jp}$ denote the indicator function of whether the primary
422 point $p$ is covered, that is:
424 \alpha_{jp} = \left \{
426 1 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$ is covered} \\
427 & \mbox{by sensor node $j$}, \\
428 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
432 The number of active sensors that cover the primary point $p$ can then be
433 computed by $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j}$ where:
437 1& \mbox{if sensor $j$ is active,} \\
438 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
442 We define the Overcoverage variable $\Theta_{p}$ as:
444 \Theta_{p} = \left \{
446 0 & \mbox{if the primary point}\\
447 & \mbox{$p$ is not covered,}\\
448 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
452 \noindent More precisely, $\Theta_{p}$ represents the number of active sensor
453 nodes minus one that cover the primary point~$p$. The Undercoverage variable
454 $U_{p}$ of the primary point $p$ is defined by:
458 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered,} \\
459 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
464 \noindent Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows:
465 \begin{equation} \label{eq:ip2r}
468 \min \sum_{p \in P} (w_{\theta} \Theta_{p} + w_{U} U_{p})&\\
469 \textrm{subject to :}&\\
470 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, &\forall p \in P\\
472 %\sum_{t \in T} X_{j,t} \leq \frac{RE_j}{e_t} &\forall j \in J \\
474 \Theta_{p}\in \mathbb{N}, &\forall p \in P\\
475 U_{p} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall p \in P \\
476 X_{j} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall j \in J
482 \item $X_{j}$ : indicates whether or not the sensor $j$ is actively sensing (1
483 if yes and 0 if not);
484 \item $\Theta_{p}$ : {\it overcoverage}, the number of sensors minus one that
485 are covering the primary point $p$;
486 \item $U_{p}$ : {\it undercoverage}, indicates whether or not the primary point
487 $p$ is being covered (1 if not covered and 0 if covered).
490 The first group of constraints indicates that some primary point $p$ should be
491 covered by at least one sensor and, if it is not always the case, overcoverage
492 and undercoverage variables help balancing the restriction equations by taking
493 positive values. Two objectives can be noticed in our model. First, we limit the
494 overcoverage of primary points to activate as few sensors as possible. Second,
495 to avoid a lack of area monitoring in a subregion we minimize the
496 undercoverage. Both weights $w_\theta$ and $w_U$ must be carefully chosen in
497 order to guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each
502 \section{\uppercase{Protocol evaluation}}
503 \label{sec:Simulation Results and Analysis}
504 \noindent \subsection{Simulation framework}
506 To assess the performance of our DiLCO protocol, we have used the discrete
507 event simulator OMNeT++ \cite{varga} to run different series of simulations.
508 Table~\ref{table3} gives the chosen parameters setting.
511 \caption{Relevant parameters for network initializing.}
514 % used for centering table
516 % centered columns (4 columns)
518 %inserts double horizontal lines
519 Parameter & Value \\ [0.5ex]
521 %Case & Strategy (with Two Leaders) & Strategy (with One Leader) & Simple Heuristic \\ [0.5ex]
525 % inserts single horizontal line
526 Sensing Field & $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ \\
527 % inserting body of the table
529 Nodes Number & 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250~nodes \\
531 Initial Energy & 500-700~joules \\
533 Sensing Period & 60 Minutes \\
534 $E_{th}$ & 36 Joules\\
538 % [1ex] adds vertical space
544 % is used to refer this table in the text
547 Simulations with five different node densities going from 50 to 250~nodes were
548 performed considering each time 25~randomly generated networks, to obtain
549 experimental results which are relevant. The nodes are deployed on a field of
550 interest of $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ in such a way that they cover the field with a
553 We chose as energy consumption model the one proposed proposed by~\cite{ChinhVu}
554 and based on ~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} with slight modifications. The energy
555 consumed by the communications is added and the part relative to a variable
556 sensing range is removed. We also assume that the nodes have the characteristics
557 of the Medusa II sensor node platform \cite{raghunathan2002energy}. A sensor
558 node typically consists of four units: a MicroController Unit, an Atmels AVR
559 ATmega103L in case of Medusa II, to perform the computations; a communication
560 (radio) unit able to send and receive messages; a sensing unit to collect data;
561 a power supply which provides the energy consumed by node. Except the battery,
562 all the other unit can be switched off to save energy according to the node
563 status. Table~\ref{table4} summarizes the energy consumed (in milliWatt per
564 second) by a node for each of its possible status.
567 \caption{Energy consumption model}
570 % used for centering table
572 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}
573 % centered columns (4 columns)
575 %inserts double horizontal lines
576 Sensor status & MCU & Radio & Sensing & Power (mW) \\ [0.5ex]
578 % inserts single horizontal line
579 Listening & ON & ON & ON & 20.05 \\
580 % inserting body of the table
582 Active & ON & OFF & ON & 9.72 \\
584 Sleep & OFF & OFF & OFF & 0.02 \\
586 Computation & ON & ON & ON & 26.83 \\
588 %\multicolumn{4}{|c|}{Energy needed to send/receive a 1-bit} & 0.2575\\
594 % is used to refer this table in the text
597 Less influent energy consumption sources like when turning on the radio,
598 starting the sensor node, changing the status of a node, etc., will be neglected
599 for the sake of simplicity. Each node saves energy by switching off its radio
600 once it has received its decision status from the corresponding leader (it can
601 be itself). As explained previously in subsection~\ref{main_idea}, two kinds of
602 packets for communication are considered in our protocol: INFO packet and
603 ActiveSleep packet. To compute the energy needed by a node to transmit or
604 receive such packets, we use the equation giving the energy spent to send a
605 1-bit-content message defined in~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} (we assume
606 symmetric communication costs), and we set their respective size to 112 and
607 24~bits. The energy required to send or receive a 1-bit-content message is thus
610 Each node has an initial energy level, in Joules, which is randomly drawn in
611 $[500-700]$. If its energy provision reaches a value below the threshold
612 $E_{th}=36$~Joules, the minimum energy needed for a node to stay active during
613 one period, it will no longer take part in the coverage task. This value
614 corresponds to the energy needed by the sensing phase, obtained by multiplying
615 the energy consumed in active state (9.72 mW) by the time in seconds for one
616 period (3,600 seconds), and adding the energy for the pre-sensing phases.
617 According to the interval of initial energy, a sensor may be active during at
620 In the simulations, we introduce the following performance metrics to evaluate
621 the efficiency of our approach:
623 %\begin{enumerate}[i)]
625 \item {{\bf Network Lifetime}:} we define the network lifetime as the time until
626 the coverage ratio drops below a predefined threshold. We denote by
627 $Lifetime_{95}$ (respectively $Lifetime_{50}$) the amount of time during which
628 the network can satisfy an area coverage greater than $95\%$ (respectively
629 $50\%$). We assume that the sensor network can fulfill its task until all its
630 nodes have been drained of their energy or it becomes disconnected. Network
631 connectivity is crucial because an active sensor node without connectivity
632 towards a base station cannot transmit any information regarding an observed
633 event in the area that it monitors.
635 \item {{\bf Coverage Ratio (CR)}:} it measures how well the WSN is able to
636 observe the area of interest. In our case, we discretized the sensor field
637 as a regular grid, which yields the following equation to compute the
641 \mbox{CR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{$n$}}{\mbox{$N$}} \times 100.
643 where $n$ is the number of covered grid points by active sensors of every
644 subregions during the current sensing phase and $N$ is the total number of grid
645 points in the sensing field. In our simulations, we have a layout of $N = 51
646 \times 26 = 1326$ grid points.
648 \item {{\bf Energy Consumption}:} energy consumption (EC) can be seen as the
649 total amount of energy consumed by the sensors during $Lifetime_{95}$
650 or $Lifetime_{50}$, divided by the number of periods. Formally, the computation
651 of EC can be expressed as follows:
654 \mbox{EC} = \frac{\sum\limits_{m=1}^{M} \left( E^{\mbox{com}}_m+E^{\mbox{list}}_m+E^{\mbox{comp}}_m
655 + E^{a}_m+E^{s}_m \right)}{M},
658 where $M$ corresponds to the number of periods. The total amount of energy
659 consumed by the sensors (EC) comes through taking into consideration four main
660 energy factors. The first one, denoted $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{com}}_m$,
661 represents the energy consumption spent by all the nodes for wireless
662 communications during period $m$. $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{list}}_m$, the next
663 factor, corresponds to the energy consumed by the sensors in LISTENING status
664 before receiving the decision to go active or sleep in period $m$.
665 $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{comp}}_m$ refers to the energy needed by all the leader
666 nodes to solve the integer program during a period. Finally, $E^a_{m}$ and
667 $E^s_{m}$ indicate the energy consumed by the whole network in the sensing phase
668 (active and sleeping nodes).
673 %\subsection{Performance Analysis for different subregions}
674 \subsection{Performance analysis}
677 In this subsection, we first focus on the performance of our DiLCO protocol for
678 different numbers of subregions. We consider partitions of the WSN area into
679 $2$, $4$, $8$, $16$, and $32$ subregions. Thus the DiLCO protocol is declined in
680 five versions: DiLCO-2, DiLCO-4, DiLCO-8, DiLCO-16, and DiLCO-32. Simulations
681 without partitioning the area of interest, cases which correspond to a
682 centralized approach, are not presented because they require high execution
683 times to solve the integer program and therefore consume too much energy.
685 We compare our protocol to two other approaches. The first one, called DESK and
686 proposed by ~\cite{ChinhVu} is a fully distributed coverage algorithm. The
687 second one, called GAF ~\cite{xu2001geography}, consists in dividing the region
688 into fixed squares. During the decision phase, in each square, one sensor is
689 chosen to remain active during the sensing phase.
691 \subsubsection{Coverage ratio}
693 Figure~\ref{fig3} shows the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes. It
694 can be seen that both DESK and GAF provide a coverage ratio which is slightly
695 better compared to DiLCO in the first thirty periods. This can be easily
696 explained by the number of active nodes: the optimization process of our
697 protocol activates less nodes than DESK or GAF, resulting in a slight decrease
698 of the coverage ratio. In case of DiLCO-2 (respectively DiLCO-4), the coverage
699 ratio exhibits a fast decrease with the number of periods and reaches zero value
700 in period~18 (respectively 46), whereas the other versions of DiLCO, DESK, and
701 GAF ensure a coverage ratio above 50\% for subsequent periods. We believe that
702 the results obtained with these two methods can be explained by a high
703 consumption of energy and we will check this assumption in the next subsection.
705 Concerning DiLCO-8, DiLCO-16, and DiLCO-32, these methods seem to be more
706 efficient than DESK and GAF, since they can provide the same level of coverage
707 (except in the first periods where DESK and GAF slightly outperform them) for a
708 greater number of periods. In fact, when our protocol is applied with a large
709 number of subregions (from 8 to 32~regions), it activates a restricted number of
710 nodes, and thus enables the extension of the network lifetime.
715 \includegraphics[scale=0.45] {CR.pdf}
716 \caption{Coverage ratio}
721 \subsubsection{Energy consumption}
723 Based on the results shown in Figure~\ref{fig3}, we focus on the DiLCO-16 and
724 DiLCO-32 versions of our protocol, and we compare their energy consumption with
725 the DESK and GAF approaches. For each sensor node we measure the energy consumed
726 according to its successive status, for different network densities. We denote
727 by $\mbox{\it Protocol}/50$ (respectively $\mbox{\it Protocol}/95$) the amount
728 of energy consumed while the area coverage is greater than $50\%$ (repectively
729 $95\%$), where {\it Protocol} is one of the four protocols we compare.
730 Figure~\ref{fig95} presents the energy consumptions observed for network sizes
731 going from 50 to 250~nodes. Let us notice that the same network sizes will be
732 used for the different performance metrics.
736 \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{EC.pdf}
737 \caption{Energy consumption per period}
741 The results depict the good performance of the different versions of our
742 protocol. Indeed, the protocols DiLCO-16/50, DiLCO-32/50, DiLCO-16/95, and
743 DiLCO-32/95 consume less energy than their DESK and GAF counterparts for a
744 similar level of area coverage. This observation reflects the larger number of
745 nodes set active by DESK and GAF.
747 Now, if we consider a same protocol, we can notice that the average consumption
748 per period increases slightly for our protocol when increasing the level of
749 coverage and the number of node, whereas it increases more largely for DESK and
750 GAF. In case of DiLCO, it means that even if a larger network allows to improve
751 the number of periods with a minimum coverage level value, this improvement has
752 a higher energy cost per period due to communication overhead and a more
753 difficult optimization problem. However, in comparison with DESK and GAF, our
754 approach has a reasonable energy overcost.
756 \subsubsection{Execution time}
758 Another interesting point to investigate is the evolution of the execution time
759 with the size of the WSN and the number of subregions. Therefore, we report for
760 every version of our protocol the average execution times in seconds needed to
761 solve the optimization problem for different WSN sizes. The execution times are
762 obtained on a laptop DELL which has an Intel Core~i3~2370~M~(2.4~GHz) dual core
763 processor and a MIPS rating equal to 35330. The corresponding execution times on
764 a MEDUSA II sensor node are then extrapolated according to the MIPS rate of the
765 Atmels AVR ATmega103L microcontroller (6~MHz), which is equal to 6, by
766 multiplying the laptop times by $\left(\frac{35330}{2} \times
767 \frac{1}{6}\right)$. The expected times on a sensor node are reported on
772 \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{T.pdf}
773 \caption{Execution time in seconds}
777 Figure~\ref{fig8} shows that DiLCO-32 has very low execution times in comparison
778 with other DiLCO versions, because the activity scheduling is tackled by a
779 larger number of leaders and each leader solves an integer problem with a
780 limited number of variables and constraints. Conversely, DiLCO-2 requires to
781 solve an optimization problem with half of the network nodes and thus presents a
782 high execution time. Nevertheless if we refer to Figure~\ref{fig3}, we observe
783 that DiLCO-32 is slightly less efficient than DilCO-16 to maintain as long as
784 possible high coverage. In fact an excessive subdivision of the area of interest
785 prevents it to ensure a good coverage especially on the borders of the
786 subregions. Thus, the optimal number of subregions can be seen as a trade-off
787 between execution time and coverage performance.
789 \subsubsection{Network lifetime}
791 In the next figure, the network lifetime is illustrated. Obviously, the lifetime
792 increases with the network size, whatever the considered protocol, since the
793 correlated node density also increases. A high network density means a high
794 node redundancy which allows to turn-off many nodes and thus to prolong the
799 \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{LT.pdf}
800 \caption{Network lifetime}
804 As highlighted by Figure~\ref{figLT95}, when the coverage level is relaxed
805 ($50\%$) the network lifetime also improves. This observation reflects the fact
806 that the higher the coverage performance, the more nodes must be active to
807 ensure the wider monitoring. For a similar level of coverage, DiLCO outperforms
808 DESK and GAF for the lifetime of the network. More specifically, if we focus on
809 the larger level of coverage ($95\%$) in the case of our protocol, the subdivision
810 in $16$~subregions seems to be the most appropriate.
813 \section{\uppercase{Conclusion and future work}}
814 \label{sec:Conclusion and Future Works}
816 A crucial problem in WSN is to schedule the sensing activities of the different
817 nodes in order to ensure both coverage of the area of interest and longer
818 network lifetime. The inherent limitations of sensor nodes, in energy provision,
819 communication and computing capacities, require protocols that optimize the use
820 of the available resources to fulfill the sensing task. To address this
821 problem, this paper proposes a two-step approach. Firstly, the field of sensing
822 is divided into smaller subregions using the concept of divide-and-conquer
823 method. Secondly, a distributed protocol called Distributed Lifetime Coverage
824 Optimization is applied in each subregion to optimize the coverage and lifetime
825 performances. In a subregion, our protocol consists in electing a leader node
826 which will then perform a sensor activity scheduling. The challenges include how
827 to select the most efficient leader in each subregion and the best
828 representative set of active nodes to ensure a high level of coverage. To assess
829 the performance of our approach, we compared it with two other approaches using
830 many performance metrics like coverage ratio or network lifetime. We have also
831 studied the impact of the number of subregions chosen to subdivide the area of
832 interest, considering different network sizes. The experiments show that
833 increasing the number of subregions improves the lifetime. The more subregions there are, the more robust the network is against random disconnection
834 resulting from dead nodes. However, for a given sensing field and network size
835 there is an optimal number of subregions. Therefore, in case of our simulation
836 context a subdivision in $16$~subregions seems to be the most relevant. The
837 optimal number of subregions will be investigated in the future.
839 \section*{\uppercase{Acknowledgements}}
841 \noindent As a Ph.D. student, Ali Kadhum IDREES would like to gratefully
842 acknowledge the University of Babylon - IRAQ for the financial support and
843 Campus France for the received support. This paper is also partially funded by
844 the Labex ACTION program (contract ANR-11-LABX-01-01).
847 \bibliographystyle{plain}
849 \bibliography{Example}}