+\fi
+
+\section{Introduction}
+\label{ch4:sec:01}
+Energy efficiency is a crucial issue in wireless sensor networks since the sensory consumption, in order to maximize the network lifetime, represents the major difficulty when designing WSNs. As a consequence, one of the scientific research challenges in WSNs, which has been addressed by a large amount of literature
+during the last few years, is the design of energy efficient approaches for coverage and connectivity~\cite{ref94}. Coverage reflects how well a sensor field is monitored. On the one hand, we want to monitor the area of interest in the most efficient way~\cite{ref95}. On the other hand, we want to use as little energy as possible. Sensor nodes are battery-powered with no means of recharging or replacing, usually due to environmental (hostile or
+unpractical environments) or cost reasons. Therefore, it is desired that the WSNs are deployed with high densities so as to exploit the overlapping sensing regions of some sensor nodes to save energy by turning off some of them during the sensing phase to prolong the network lifetime.
+
+In this chapter, we design a protocol that focuses on the area coverage problem with the objective of maximizing the network lifetime. Our proposition, the Distributed Lifetime Coverage Optimization (DiLCO) protocol, maintains the coverage and improves the lifetime in WSNs. The area of interest is first
+divided into subregions using a divide-and-conquer algorithm and an activity scheduling for sensor nodes is then planned by the elected leader in each subregion. In fact, the nodes in a subregion can be seen as a cluster where each node sends sensing data to the cluster head or the sink node. Furthermore, the activities in a subregion/cluster can continue even if another cluster stops due
+to too many node failures. Our DiLCO protocol considers periods, where a period starts with a discovery phase to exchange information between sensors of the same subregion, in order to choose in a suitable manner a sensor node (the leader) to carry out the coverage strategy. In each subregion, the activation of the sensors for the sensing phase of the current period is obtained by solving
+an integer program. The resulting activation vector is broadcast by a leader to every node of its subregion.
+
+The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows. The next section is devoted to the DiLCO protocol description. Section \ref{ch4:sec:03} gives the primary points based coverage problem formulation which is used to schedule the activation of sensors. Section \ref{ch4:sec:04} shows the simulation
+results obtained using the discrete event simulator OMNeT++ \cite{ref158}. They fully demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach. Finally, we give concluding remarks in section \ref{ch4:sec:05}.
+
+
