1 \documentclass[a4paper,twoside]{article}
13 \usepackage{SCITEPRESS}
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25 %\title{Authors' Instructions \subtitle{Preparation of Camera-Ready Contributions to SCITEPRESS Proceedings} }
27 \title{Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization Protocol \\in Wireless Sensor Networks}
29 \author{\authorname{Ali Kadhum Idrees, Karine Deschinkel, Michel Salomon, and Rapha\"el Couturier}
30 \affiliation{FEMTO-ST Institute, UMR 6174 CNRS, University of Franche-Comt\'e, Belfort, France}
31 %\affiliation{\sup{2}Department of Computing, Main University, MySecondTown, MyCountry}
32 \email{ali.idness@edu.univ-fcomte.fr, $\lbrace$karine.deschinkel, michel.salomon, raphael.couturier$\rbrace$@univ-fcomte.fr}
33 %\email{\{f\_author, s\_author\}@ips.xyz.edu, t\_author@dc.mu.edu}
36 \keywords{Wireless Sensor Networks, Area Coverage, Network lifetime,
37 Optimization, Scheduling.}
39 \abstract{ One of the main research challenges faced in Wireless Sensor Networks
40 (WSNs) is to preserve continuously and effectively the coverage of an area (or
41 region) of interest to be monitored, while simultaneously preventing as much
42 as possible a network failure due to battery-depleted nodes. In this paper we
43 propose a protocol, called Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization protocol
44 (DiLCO), which maintains the coverage and improves the lifetime of a wireless
45 sensor network. First, we partition the area of interest into subregions using
46 a classical divide-and-conquer method. Our DiLCO protocol is then distributed
47 on the sensor nodes in each subregion in a second step. To fulfill our
48 objective, the proposed protocol combines two effective techniques: a leader
49 election in each subregion, followed by an optimization-based node activity
50 scheduling performed by each elected leader. This two-step process takes
51 place periodically, in order to choose a small set of nodes remaining active
52 for sensing during a time slot. Each set is built to ensure coverage at a low
53 energy cost, allowing to optimize the network lifetime. More precisely, a
54 period consists of four phases: (i)~Information Exchange, (ii)~Leader
55 Election, (iii)~Decision, and (iv)~Sensing. The decision process, which
56 results in an activity scheduling vector, is carried out by a leader node
57 through the solving of an integer program. In comparison with some other
58 protocols, the simulations done using the discrete event simulator OMNeT++
59 show that our approach is able to increase the WSN lifetime and provides
60 improved coverage performance. }
62 \onecolumn \maketitle \normalsize \vfill
64 \section{\uppercase{Introduction}}
65 \label{sec:introduction}
68 Energy efficiency is a crucial issue in wireless sensor networks since sensory
69 consumption, in order to maximize the network lifetime, represents the major
70 difficulty when designing WSNs. As a consequence, one of the scientific research
71 challenges in WSNs, which has been addressed by a large amount of literature
72 during the last few years, is the design of energy efficient approaches for
73 coverage and connectivity~\cite{conti2014mobile}. Coverage reflects how well a
74 sensor field is monitored. On the one hand we want to monitor the area of
75 interest in the most efficient way~\cite{Nayak04}. On the other hand we want to
76 use as little energy as possible. Sensor nodes are battery-powered with no
77 means of recharging or replacing, usually due to environmental (hostile or
78 unpractical environments) or cost reasons. Therefore, it is desired that the
79 WSNs are deployed with high densities so as to exploit the overlapping sensing
80 regions of some sensor nodes to save energy by turning off some of them during
81 the sensing phase to prolong the network lifetime.
83 In this paper we design a protocol that focuses on the area coverage problem
84 with the objective of maximizing the network lifetime. Our proposition, the
85 Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization (DILCO) protocol, maintains the
86 coverage and improves the lifetime in WSNs. The area of interest is first
87 divided into subregions using a divide-and-conquer algorithm and an activity
88 scheduling for sensor nodes is then planned by the elected leader in each
89 subregion. In fact, the nodes in a subregion can be seen as a cluster where each
90 node sends sensing data to the cluster head or the sink node. Furthermore, the
91 activities in a subregion/cluster can continue even if another cluster stops due
92 to too many node failures. Our DiLCO protocol considers periods, where a period
93 starts with a discovery phase to exchange information between sensors of the
94 same subregion, in order to choose in a suitable manner a sensor node (the
95 leader) to carry out the coverage strategy. In each subregion the activation of
96 the sensors for the sensing phase of the current period is obtained by solving
97 an integer program. The resulting activation vector is broadcast by a leader
98 to every node of its subregion.
100 The remainder of the paper continues with Section~\ref{sec:Literature Review}
101 where a review of some related works is presented. The next section describes
102 the DiLCO protocol, followed in Section~\ref{cp} by the coverage model
103 formulation which is used to schedule the activation of
104 sensors. Section~\ref{sec:Simulation Results and Analysis} shows the simulation
105 results. The paper ends with a conclusion and some suggestions for further work
106 in Section~\ref{sec:Conclusion and Future Works}.
108 \section{\uppercase{Literature Review}}
109 \label{sec:Literature Review}
111 \noindent In this section, we summarize some related works regarding the
112 coverage problem and distinguish our DiLCO protocol from the works presented in
115 The most discussed coverage problems in literature can be classified into three
116 types \cite{li2013survey}: area coverage \cite{Misra} where every point inside
117 an area is to be monitored, target coverage \cite{yang2014novel} where the main
118 objective is to cover only a finite number of discrete points called targets,
119 and barrier coverage \cite{Kumar:2005}\cite{kim2013maximum} to prevent intruders
120 from entering into the region of interest. In \cite{Deng2012} authors transform
121 the area coverage problem to the target coverage problem taking into account the
122 intersection points among disks of sensors nodes or between disk of sensor nodes
123 and boundaries. {\it In DiLCO protocol, the area coverage, i.e. the coverage of
124 every point in the sensing region, is transformed to the coverage of a
125 fraction of points called primary points. }
127 The major approach to extend network lifetime while preserving coverage is to
128 divide/organize the sensors into a suitable number of set covers (disjoint or
129 non-disjoint), where each set completely covers a region of interest, and to
130 activate these set covers successively. The network activity can be planned in
131 advance and scheduled for the entire network lifetime or organized in periods,
132 and the set of active sensor nodes is decided at the beginning of each period
133 \cite{ling2009energy}. Active node selection is determined based on the problem
134 requirements (e.g. area monitoring, connectivity, power efficiency). For
135 instance, Jaggi et al. \cite{jaggi2006} address the problem of maximizing
136 network lifetime by dividing sensors into the maximum number of disjoint subsets
137 such that each subset can ensure both coverage and connectivity. A greedy
138 algorithm is applied once to solve this problem and the computed sets are
139 activated in succession to achieve the desired network lifetime. Vu
140 \cite{chin2007}, Padmatvathy et al. \cite{pc10}, propose algorithms working in a
141 periodic fashion where a cover set is computed at the beginning of each period.
142 {\it Motivated by these works, DiLCO protocol works in periods, where each
143 period contains a preliminary phase for information exchange and decisions,
144 followed by a sensing phase where one cover set is in charge of the sensing
147 Various approaches, including centralized, or distributed algorithms, have been
148 proposed to extend the network lifetime. In distributed
149 algorithms~\cite{yangnovel,ChinhVu,qu2013distributed}, information is
150 disseminated throughout the network and sensors decide cooperatively by
151 communicating with their neighbors which of them will remain in sleep mode for a
152 certain period of time. The centralized
153 algorithms~\cite{cardei2005improving,zorbas2010solving,pujari2011high} always
154 provide nearly or close to optimal solution since the algorithm has global view
155 of the whole network. But such a method has the disadvantage of requiring high
156 communication costs, since the node (located at the base station) making the
157 decision needs information from all the sensor nodes in the area and the amount
158 of information can be huge. {\it In order to be suitable for large-scale
159 network, in the DiLCO protocol, the area coverage is divided into several
160 smaller subregions, and in each one, a node called the leader is in charge for
161 selecting the active sensors for the current period.}
163 A large variety of coverage scheduling algorithms has been developed. Many of
164 the existing algorithms, dealing with the maximization of the number of cover
165 sets, are heuristics. These heuristics involve the construction of a cover set
166 by including in priority the sensor nodes which cover critical targets, that is
167 to say targets that are covered by the smallest number of sensors
168 \cite{berman04,zorbas2010solving}. Other approaches are based on mathematical
169 programming formulations~\cite{cardei2005energy,5714480,pujari2011high,Yang2014}
170 and dedicated techniques (solving with a branch-and-bound algorithms available
171 in optimization solver). The problem is formulated as an optimization problem
172 (maximization of the lifetime or number of cover sets) under target coverage and
173 energy constraints. Column generation techniques, well-known and widely
174 practiced techniques for solving linear programs with too many variables, have
176 used~\cite{castano2013column,rossi2012exact,deschinkel2012column}. {\it In DiLCO
177 protocol, each leader, in each subregion, solves an integer program with a
178 double objective consisting in minimizing the overcoverage and limiting the
179 undercoverage. This program is inspired from the work of \cite{pedraza2006}
180 where the objective is to maximize the number of cover sets.}
182 \section{\uppercase{Description of the DiLCO protocol}}
183 \label{sec:The DiLCO Protocol Description}
185 \noindent In this section, we introduce the DiLCO protocol which is distributed
186 on each subregion in the area of interest. It is based on two efficient
187 techniques: network leader election and sensor activity scheduling for coverage
188 preservation and energy conservation, applied periodically to efficiently
189 maximize the lifetime in the network.
191 \subsection{Assumptions and models}
193 \noindent We consider a sensor network composed of static nodes distributed
194 independently and uniformly at random. A high density deployment ensures a high
195 coverage ratio of the interested area at the start. The nodes are supposed to
196 have homogeneous characteristics from a communication and a processing point of
197 view, whereas they have heterogeneous energy provisions. Each node has access
198 to its location thanks, either to a hardware component (like a GPS unit), or a
199 location discovery algorithm.
201 \indent We consider a boolean disk coverage model which is the most widely used
202 sensor coverage model in the literature. Thus, since a sensor has a constant
203 sensing range $R_s$, every space points within a disk centered at a sensor with
204 the radius of the sensing range is said to be covered by this sensor. We also
205 assume that the communication range $R_c \geq 2R_s$. In fact, Zhang and
206 Hou~\cite{Zhang05} proved that if the transmission range fulfills the previous
207 hypothesis, a complete coverage of a convex area implies connectivity among the
208 working nodes in the active mode.
210 \indent For each sensor we also define a set of points called primary
211 points~\cite{idrees2014coverage} to approximate the area coverage it provides,
212 rather than working with a continuous coverage. Thus, a sensing disk
213 corresponding to a sensor node is covered by its neighboring nodes if all its
214 primary points are covered. Obviously, the approximation of coverage is more or
215 less accurate according to the number of primary points.
218 \subsection{Main idea}
220 \noindent We start by applying a divide-and-conquer algorithm to partition the
221 area of interest into smaller areas called subregions and then our protocol is
222 executed simultaneously in each subregion.
226 \includegraphics[width=75mm]{FirstModel.pdf} % 70mm
227 \caption{DiLCO protocol}
231 As shown in Figure~\ref{fig2}, the proposed DiLCO protocol is a periodic
232 protocol where each period is decomposed into 4~phases: Information Exchange,
233 Leader Election, Decision, and Sensing. For each period there will be exactly
234 one cover set in charge of the sensing task. A periodic scheduling is
235 interesting because it enhances the robustness of the network against node
236 failures. First, a node that has not enough energy to complete a period, or
237 which fails before the decision is taken, will be excluded from the scheduling
238 process. Second, if a node fails later, whereas it was supposed to sense the
239 region of interest, it will only affect the quality of the coverage until the
240 definition of a new cover set in the next period. Constraints, like energy
241 consumption, can be easily taken into consideration since the sensors can update
242 and exchange their information during the first phase. Let us notice that the
243 phases before the sensing one (Information Exchange, Leader Election, and
244 Decision) are energy consuming for all the nodes, even nodes that will not be
245 retained by the leader to keep watch over the corresponding area.
247 During the execution of the DiLCO protocol, two kinds of packet will be used:
248 %\begin{enumerate}[(a)]
250 \item INFO packet: sent by each sensor node to all the nodes inside a same
251 subregion for information exchange.
252 \item ActiveSleep packet: sent by the leader to all the nodes in its subregion
253 to inform them to stay Active or to go Sleep during the sensing phase.
256 and each sensor node will have five possible status in the network:
257 %\begin{enumerate}[(a)]
259 \item LISTENING: sensor is waiting for a decision (to be active or not);
260 \item COMPUTATION: sensor applies the optimization process as leader;
261 \item ACTIVE: sensor is active;
262 \item SLEEP: sensor is turned off;
263 \item COMMUNICATION: sensor is transmitting or receiving packet.
267 An outline of the protocol implementation is given by Algorithm~\ref{alg:DiLCO}
268 which describes the execution of a period by a node (denoted by $s_j$ for a
269 sensor node indexed by $j$). At the beginning a node checks whether it has
270 enough energy to stay active during the next sensing phase. If yes, it exchanges
271 information with all the other nodes belonging to the same subregion: it
272 collects from each node its position coordinates, remaining energy ($RE_j$), ID,
273 and the number of one-hop neighbors still alive. Once the first phase is
274 completed, the nodes of a subregion choose a leader to take the decision based
275 on the following criteria with decreasing importance: larger number of
276 neighbors, larger remaining energy, and then in case of equality, larger index.
277 After that, if the sensor node is leader, it will execute the integer program
278 algorithm (see Section~\ref{cp}) which provides a set of sensors planned to be
279 active in the next sensing phase. As leader, it will send an Active-Sleep packet
280 to each sensor in the same subregion to indicate it if it has to be active or
281 not. Alternately, if the sensor is not the leader, it will wait for the
282 Active-Sleep packet to know its state for the coming sensing phase.
285 \begin{algorithm}[h!]
288 %\emph{Initialize the sensor node and determine it's position and subregion} \;
290 \If{ $RE_j \geq E_{th}$ }{
291 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
292 \emph{Send $INFO()$ packet to other nodes in the subregion}\;
293 \emph{Wait $INFO()$ packet from other nodes in the subregion}\;
294 %\emph{UPDATE $RE_j$ for every sent or received INFO Packet}\;
295 %\emph{ Collect information and construct the list L for all nodes in the subregion}\;
297 %\If{ the received INFO Packet = No. of nodes in it's subregion -1 }{
298 \emph{LeaderID = Leader election}\;
299 \If{$ s_j.ID = LeaderID $}{
300 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMPUTATION}\;
301 \emph{$\left\{\left(X_{1},\dots,X_{k},\dots,X_{J}\right)\right\}$ =
302 Execute Integer Program Algorithm($J$)}\;
303 \emph{$s_j.status$ = COMMUNICATION}\;
304 \emph{Send $ActiveSleep()$ to each node $k$ in subregion} \;
305 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
308 \emph{$s_j.status$ = LISTENING}\;
309 \emph{Wait $ActiveSleep()$ packet from the Leader}\;
311 \emph{Update $RE_j $}\;
315 \Else { Exclude $s_j$ from entering in the current sensing phase}
318 \caption{DiLCO($s_j$)}
323 \section{\uppercase{Coverage problem formulation}}
326 \indent Our model is based on the model proposed by \cite{pedraza2006} where the
327 objective is to find a maximum number of disjoint cover sets. To accomplish
328 this goal, the authors proposed an integer program which forces undercoverage
329 and overcoverage of targets to become minimal at the same time. They use binary
330 variables $x_{jl}$ to indicate if sensor $j$ belongs to cover set $l$. In our
331 model, we consider that the binary variable $X_{j}$ determines the activation of
332 sensor $j$ in the sensing phase. We also consider primary points as targets.
333 The set of primary points is denoted by $P$ and the set of sensors by $J$.
335 \noindent Let $\alpha_{jp}$ denote the indicator function of whether the primary
336 point $p$ is covered, that is:
338 \alpha_{jp} = \left \{
340 1 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$ is covered} \\
341 & \mbox{by sensor node $j$}, \\
342 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
346 The number of active sensors that cover the primary point $p$ can then be
347 computed by $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j}$ where:
351 1& \mbox{if sensor $j$ is active,} \\
352 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
356 We define the Overcoverage variable $\Theta_{p}$ as:
358 \Theta_{p} = \left \{
360 0 & \mbox{if the primary point}\\
361 & \mbox{$p$ is not covered,}\\
362 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
366 \noindent More precisely, $\Theta_{p}$ represents the number of active sensor
367 nodes minus one that cover the primary point~$p$. The Undercoverage variable
368 $U_{p}$ of the primary point $p$ is defined by:
372 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered,} \\
373 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
378 \noindent Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows:
379 \begin{equation} \label{eq:ip2r}
382 \min \sum_{p \in P} (w_{\theta} \Theta_{p} + w_{U} U_{p})&\\
383 \textrm{subject to :}&\\
384 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, &\forall p \in P\\
386 %\sum_{t \in T} X_{j,t} \leq \frac{RE_j}{e_t} &\forall j \in J \\
388 \Theta_{p}\in \mathbb{N}, &\forall p \in P\\
389 U_{p} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall p \in P \\
390 X_{j} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall j \in J
396 \item $X_{j}$ : indicates whether or not the sensor $j$ is actively sensing (1
397 if yes and 0 if not);
398 \item $\Theta_{p}$ : {\it overcoverage}, the number of sensors minus one that
399 are covering the primary point $p$;
400 \item $U_{p}$ : {\it undercoverage}, indicates whether or not the primary point
401 $p$ is being covered (1 if not covered and 0 if covered).
404 The first group of constraints indicates that some primary point $p$ should be
405 covered by at least one sensor and, if it is not always the case, overcoverage
406 and undercoverage variables help balancing the restriction equations by taking
407 positive values. Two objectives can be noticed in our model. First, we limit the
408 overcoverage of primary points to activate as few sensors as possible. Second,
409 to avoid a lack of area monitoring in a subregion we minimize the
410 undercoverage. Both weights $w_\theta$ and $w_U$ must be carefully chosen in
411 order to guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each
414 \section{\uppercase{Protocol evaluation}}
415 \label{sec:Simulation Results and Analysis}
416 \noindent \subsection{Simulation framework}
418 To assess the performance of our DiLCO protocol, we have used the discrete
419 event simulator OMNeT++ \cite{varga} to run different series of simulations.
420 Table~\ref{table3} gives the chosen parameters setting.
423 \caption{Relevant parameters for network initializing.}
426 % used for centering table
428 % centered columns (4 columns)
430 %inserts double horizontal lines
431 Parameter & Value \\ [0.5ex]
433 %Case & Strategy (with Two Leaders) & Strategy (with One Leader) & Simple Heuristic \\ [0.5ex]
437 % inserts single horizontal line
438 Sensing Field & $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ \\
439 % inserting body of the table
441 Nodes Number & 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250~nodes \\
443 Initial Energy & 500-700~joules \\
445 Sensing Period & 60 Minutes \\
446 $E_{th}$ & 36 Joules\\
450 % [1ex] adds vertical space
456 % is used to refer this table in the text
459 Simulations with five different node densities going from 50 to 250~nodes were
460 performed considering each time 25~randomly generated networks, to obtain
461 experimental results which are relevant. The nodes are deployed on a field of
462 interest of $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ in such a way that they cover the field with a
465 We chose as energy consumption model the one proposed proposed by~\cite{ChinhVu}
466 and based on ~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} with slight modifications. The energy
467 consumed by the communications is added and the part relative to a variable
468 sensing range is removed. We also assume that the nodes have the characteristics
469 of the Medusa II sensor node platform \cite{raghunathan2002energy}. A sensor
470 node typically consists of four units: a MicroController Unit, an Atmels AVR
471 ATmega103L in case of Medusa II, to perform the computations; a communication
472 (radio) unit able to send and receive messages; a sensing unit to collect data;
473 a power supply which provides the energy consumed by node. Except the battery,
474 all the other unit can be switched off to save energy according to the node
475 status. Table~\ref{table4} summarizes the energy consumed (in milliWatt per
476 second) by a node for each of its possible status.
479 \caption{Energy consumption model}
482 % used for centering table
484 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|c|}
485 % centered columns (4 columns)
487 %inserts double horizontal lines
488 Sensor status & MCU & Radio & Sensing & Power (mW) \\ [0.5ex]
490 % inserts single horizontal line
491 Listening & ON & ON & ON & 20.05 \\
492 % inserting body of the table
494 Active & ON & OFF & ON & 9.72 \\
496 Sleep & OFF & OFF & OFF & 0.02 \\
498 Computation & ON & ON & ON & 26.83 \\
500 %\multicolumn{4}{|c|}{Energy needed to send/receive a 1-bit} & 0.2575\\
506 % is used to refer this table in the text
509 Less influent energy consumption sources like when turning on the radio,
510 starting the sensor node, changing the status of a node, etc., will be neglected
511 for the sake of simplicity. Each node saves energy by switching off its radio
512 once it has received its decision status from the corresponding leader (it can
513 be itself). As explained previously in subsection~\ref{main_idea}, two kinds of
514 packets for communication are considered in our protocol: INFO packet and
515 ActiveSleep packet. To compute the energy needed by a node to transmit or
516 receive such packets, we use the equation giving the energy spent to send a
517 1-bit-content message defined in~\cite{raghunathan2002energy} (we assume
518 symmetric communication costs), and we set their respective size to 112 and
519 24~bits. The energy required to send or receive a 1-bit-content message is thus
522 Each node has an initial energy level, in Joules, which is randomly drawn in
523 $[500-700]$. If its energy provision reaches a value below the threshold
524 $E_{th}=36$~Joules, the minimum energy needed for a node to stay active during
525 one period, it will no longer take part in the coverage task. This value
526 corresponds to the energy needed by the sensing phase, obtained by multiplying
527 the energy consumed in active state (9.72 mW) by the time in seconds for one
528 period (3,600 seconds), and adding the energy for the pre-sensing phases.
529 According to the interval of initial energy, a sensor may be active during at
532 In the simulations, we introduce the following performance metrics to evaluate
533 the efficiency of our approach:
535 %\begin{enumerate}[i)]
537 \item {{\bf Network Lifetime}:} we define the network lifetime as the time until
538 the coverage ratio drops below a predefined threshold. We denote by
539 $Lifetime_{95}$ (respectively $Lifetime_{50}$) the amount of time during which
540 the network can satisfy an area coverage greater than $95\%$ (respectively
541 $50\%$). We assume that the sensor network can fulfill its task until all its
542 nodes have been drained of their energy or it becomes disconnected. Network
543 connectivity is crucial because an active sensor node without connectivity
544 towards a base station cannot transmit any information regarding an observed
545 event in the area that it monitors.
547 \item {{\bf Coverage Ratio (CR)}:} it measures how well the WSN is able to
548 observe the area of interest. In our case, we discretized the sensor field
549 as a regular grid, which yields the following equation to compute the
553 \mbox{CR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{$n$}}{\mbox{$N$}} \times 100.
555 where $n$ is the number of covered grid points by active sensors of every
556 subregions during the current sensing phase and $N$ is the total number of grid
557 points in the sensing field. In our simulations, we have a layout of $N = 51
558 \times 26 = 1326$ grid points.
560 \item {{\bf Energy Consumption}:} energy consumption (EC) can be seen as the
561 total amount of energy consumed by the sensors during $Lifetime_{95}$
562 or $Lifetime_{50}$, divided by the number of periods. Formally, the computation
563 of EC can be expressed as follows:
566 \mbox{EC} = \frac{\sum\limits_{m=1}^{M} \left( E^{\mbox{com}}_m+E^{\mbox{list}}_m+E^{\mbox{comp}}_m
567 + E^{a}_m+E^{s}_m \right)}{M},
570 where $M$ corresponds to the number of periods. The total amount of energy
571 consumed by the sensors (EC) comes through taking into consideration four main
572 energy factors. The first one, denoted $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{com}}_m$,
573 represents the energy consumption spent by all the nodes for wireless
574 communications during period $m$. $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{list}}_m$, the next
575 factor, corresponds to the energy consumed by the sensors in LISTENING status
576 before receiving the decision to go active or sleep in period $m$.
577 $E^{\scriptsize \mbox{comp}}_m$ refers to the energy needed by all the leader
578 nodes to solve the integer program during a period. Finally, $E^a_{m}$ and
579 $E^s_{m}$ indicate the energy consumed by the whole network in the sensing phase
580 (active and sleeping nodes).
585 %\subsection{Performance Analysis for different subregions}
586 \subsection{Performance analysis}
589 In this subsection, we first focus on the performance of our DiLCO protocol for
590 different numbers of subregions. We consider partitions of the WSN area into
591 $2$, $4$, $8$, $16$, and $32$ subregions. Thus the DiLCO protocol is declined in
592 five versions: DiLCO-2, DiLCO-4, DiLCO-8, DiLCO-16, and DiLCO-32. Simulations
593 without partitioning the area of interest, cases which correspond to a
594 centralized approach, are not presented because they require high execution
595 times to solve the integer program and therefore consume too much energy.
597 We compare our protocol to two other approaches. The first one, called DESK and
598 proposed by ~\cite{ChinhVu} is a fully distributed coverage algorithm. The
599 second one, called GAF ~\cite{xu2001geography}, consists in dividing the region
600 into fixed squares. During the decision phase, in each square, one sensor is
601 chosen to remain active during the sensing phase.
603 \subsubsection{Coverage ratio}
605 Figure~\ref{fig3} shows the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes. It
606 can be seen that both DESK and GAF provide a coverage ratio which is slightly
607 better compared to DiLCO in the first thirty periods. This can be easily
608 explained by the number of active nodes: the optimization process of our
609 protocol activates less nodes than DESK or GAF, resulting in a slight decrease
610 of the coverage ratio. In case of DiLCO-2 (respectively DiLCO-4), the coverage
611 ratio exhibits a fast decrease with the number of periods and reaches zero value
612 in period~18 (respectively 46), whereas the other versions of DiLCO, DESK, and
613 GAF ensure a coverage ratio above 50\% for subsequent periods. We believe that
614 the results obtained with these two methods can be explained by a high
615 consumption of energy and we will check this assumption in the next subsection.
617 Concerning DiLCO-8, DiLCO-16, and DiLCO-32, these methods seem to be more
618 efficient than DESK and GAF, since they can provide the same level of coverage
619 (except in the first periods where DESK and GAF slightly outperform them) for a
620 greater number of periods. In fact, when our protocol is applied with a large
621 number of subregions (from 8 to 32~regions), it activates a restricted number of
622 nodes, and thus enables the extension of the network lifetime.
627 \includegraphics[scale=0.45] {R/CR.pdf}
628 \caption{Coverage ratio}
633 \subsubsection{Energy consumption}
635 Based on the results shown in Figure~\ref{fig3}, we focus on the DiLCO-16 and
636 DiLCO-32 versions of our protocol, and we compare their energy consumption with
637 the DESK and GAF approaches. For each sensor node we measure the energy consumed
638 according to its successive status, for different network densities. We denote
639 by $\mbox{\it Protocol}/50$ (respectively $\mbox{\it Protocol}/95$) the amount
640 of energy consumed while the area coverage is greater than $50\%$ (repectively
641 $95\%$), where {\it Protocol} is one of the four protocols we compare.
642 Figure~\ref{fig95} presents the energy consumptions observed for network sizes
643 going from 50 to 250~nodes. Let us notice that the same network sizes will be
644 used for the different performance metrics.
648 \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{R/EC.pdf}
649 \caption{Energy consumption per period}
653 The results depict the good performance of the different versions of our
654 protocol. Indeed, the protocols DiLCO-16/50, DiLCO-32/50, DiLCO-16/95, and
655 DiLCO-32/95 consume less energy than their DESK and GAF counterparts for a
656 similar level of area coverage. This observation reflects the larger number of
657 nodes set active by DESK and GAF.
659 Now, if we consider a same protocol, we can notice that the average consumption
660 per period increases slightly for our protocol when increasing the level of
661 coverage and the number of node, whereas it increases more largely for DESK and
662 GAF. In case of DiLCO, it means that even if a larger network allows to improve
663 the number of periods with a minimum coverage level value, this improvement has
664 a higher energy cost per period due to communication overhead and a more
665 difficult optimization problem. However, in comparison with DESK and GAF, our
666 approach has a reasonable energy overcost.
668 \subsubsection{Execution time}
670 Another interesting point to investigate is the evolution of the execution time
671 with the size of the WSN and the number of subregions. Therefore, we report for
672 every version of our protocol the average execution times in seconds needed to
673 solve the optimization problem for different WSN sizes. The execution times are
674 obtained on a laptop DELL which has an Intel Core~i3~2370~M~(2.4~GHz) dual core
675 processor and a MIPS rating equal to 35330. The corresponding execution times on
676 a MEDUSA II sensor node are then extrapolated according to the MIPS rate of the
677 Atmels AVR ATmega103L microcontroller (6~MHz), which is equal to 6, by
678 multiplying the laptop times by $\left(\frac{35330}{2} \times
679 \frac{1}{6}\right)$. The expected times on a sensor node are reported on
684 \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{R/T.pdf}
685 \caption{Execution time in seconds}
689 Figure~\ref{fig8} shows that DiLCO-32 has very low execution times in comparison
690 with other DiLCO versions, because the activity scheduling is tackled by a
691 larger number of leaders and each leader solves an integer problem with a
692 limited number of variables and constraints. Conversely, DiLCO-2 requires to
693 solve an optimization problem with half of the network nodes and thus presents a
694 high execution time. Nevertheless if we refer to Figure~\ref{fig3}, we observe
695 that DiLCO-32 is slightly less efficient than DilCO-16 to maintain as long as
696 possible high coverage. In fact an excessive subdivision of the area of interest
697 prevents it to ensure a good coverage especially on the borders of the
698 subregions. Thus, the optimal number of subregions can be seen as a trade-off
699 between execution time and coverage performance.
701 \subsubsection{Network lifetime}
703 In the next figure, the network lifetime is illustrated. Obviously, the lifetime
704 increases with the network size, whatever the considered protocol, since the
705 correlated node density also increases. A high network density means a high
706 node redundancy which allows to turn-off many nodes and thus to prolong the
711 \includegraphics[scale=0.45]{R/LT.pdf}
712 \caption{Network lifetime}
716 As highlighted by Figure~\ref{figLT95}, when the coverage level is relaxed
717 ($50\%$) the network lifetime also improves. This observation reflects the fact
718 that the higher the coverage performance, the more nodes must be active to
719 ensure the wider monitoring. For a similar level of coverage, DiLCO outperforms
720 DESK and GAF for the lifetime of the network. More specifically, if we focus on
721 the larger level of coverage ($95\%$) in the case of our protocol, the subdivision
722 in $16$~subregions seems to be the most appropriate.
725 \section{\uppercase{Conclusion and future work}}
726 \label{sec:Conclusion and Future Works}
728 A crucial problem in WSN is to schedule the sensing activities of the different
729 nodes in order to ensure both coverage of the area of interest and longer
730 network lifetime. The inherent limitations of sensor nodes, in energy provision,
731 communication and computing capacities, require protocols that optimize the use
732 of the available resources to fulfill the sensing task. To address this
733 problem, this paper proposes a two-step approach. Firstly, the field of sensing
734 is divided into smaller subregions using the concept of divide-and-conquer
735 method. Secondly, a distributed protocol called Distributed Lifetime Coverage
736 Optimization is applied in each subregion to optimize the coverage and lifetime
737 performances. In a subregion, our protocol consists in electing a leader node
738 which will then perform a sensor activity scheduling. The challenges include how
739 to select the most efficient leader in each subregion and the best
740 representative set of active nodes to ensure a high level of coverage. To assess
741 the performance of our approach, we compared it with two other approaches using
742 many performance metrics like coverage ratio or network lifetime. We have also
743 studied the impact of the number of subregions chosen to subdivide the area of
744 interest, considering different network sizes. The experiments show that
745 increasing the number of subregions improves the lifetime. The more subregions there are, the more robust the network is against random disconnection
746 resulting from dead nodes. However, for a given sensing field and network size
747 there is an optimal number of subregions. Therefore, in case of our simulation
748 context a subdivision in $16$~subregions seems to be the most relevant. The
749 optimal number of subregions will be investigated in the future.
751 \section*{\uppercase{Acknowledgements}}
753 \noindent As a Ph.D. student, Ali Kadhum IDREES would like to gratefully
754 acknowledge the University of Babylon - IRAQ for the financial support and
755 Campus France for the received support. This paper is also partially funded by
756 the Labex ACTION program (contract ANR-11-LABX-01-01).
759 \bibliographystyle{apalike}
761 \bibliography{Example}}