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46 \title{Coverage and Lifetime Optimization \\
47 in Heterogeneous Energy Wireless Sensor Networks}
49 \author{\IEEEauthorblockN{Ali Kadhum Idrees, Karine Deschinkel, Michel Salomon,
50 and Rapha\"el Couturier}
51 \IEEEauthorblockA{FEMTO-ST Institute, UMR 6174 CNRS \\
52 University of Franche-Comt\'e \\
54 Email: ali.idness@edu.univ-fcomte.fr, $\lbrace$karine.deschinkel, michel.salomon,
55 raphael.couturier$\rbrace$@univ-fcomte.fr}}
60 One of the fundamental challenges in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)
61 is the coverage preservation and the extension of the network lifetime
62 continuously and effectively when monitoring a certain area (or
63 region) of interest. In this paper, a coverage optimization protocol
64 to improve the lifetime in heterogeneous energy wireless sensor
65 networks is proposed. The area of interest is first divided into
66 subregions using a divide-and-conquer method and then the scheduling
67 of sensor node activity is planned for each subregion. The proposed
68 scheduling considers rounds during which a small number of nodes,
69 remaining active for sensing, is selected to ensure coverage. Each
70 round consists in four phases: (i)~Information Exchange, (ii)~Leader
71 Election, (iii)~Decision, and (iv)~Sensing. The decision process is
72 carried out by a leader node, which solves an integer program.
73 Simulation results show that the proposed approach can prolong the
74 network lifetime and improve the coverage performance.
78 Wireless Sensor Networks, Area Coverage, Network lifetime,
79 Optimization, Scheduling.
81 %\keywords{Area Coverage, Network lifetime, Optimization, Distributed Protocol}
83 \IEEEpeerreviewmaketitle
85 \section{Introduction}
87 %\indent The fast developments in the low-cost sensor devices and
88 %wireless communications have allowed the emergence the WSNs. WSN
89 %includes a large number of small, limited-power sensors that can
90 %sense, process and transmit data over a wireless communication. They
91 %communicate with each other by using multi-hop wireless
92 %communications, cooperate together to monitor the area of interest,
93 %and the measured data can be reported to a monitoring center called
94 %sink for analysis it~\cite{Sudip03}. There are several applications
95 %used the WSN including health, home, environmental, military, and
96 %industrial applications~\cite{Akyildiz02}. The coverage problem is one
97 %of the fundamental challenges in WSNs~\cite{Nayak04} that consists in
98 %monitoring efficiently and continuously the area of
99 %interest. Thelimited energy of sensors represents the main challenge
100 %in the WSNs design~\cite{Sudip03}, where it is difficult to replace
101 %and/or recharge their batteries because the the area of interest
102 %nature (such as hostile environments) and the cost. So, it is
103 %necessary that a WSN deployed with high density because spatial
104 %redundancy can then be exploited to increase the lifetime of the
105 %network. However, turn on all the sensor nodes, which monitor the same
106 %region at the same time leads to decrease the lifetime of the network.
108 Recent years have witnessed significant advances in wireless
109 communications and embedded micro-sensing MEMS technologies which have
110 led to the emergence of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) as one of the
111 most promising technologies \cite{Akyildiz02}. In fact, they present
112 huge potential in several domains ranging from health care
113 applications to military applications. A sensor network is composed of
114 a large number of tiny sensing devices deployed in a region of
115 interest. Each device has processing and wireless communication
116 capabilities, which enable it to sense its environment, to compute, to
117 store information and to deliver report messages to a base station
118 \cite{Sudip03}. One of the main design issues in WSNs is to prolong
119 the network lifetime, while achieving acceptable quality of service
120 for applications. Indeed, sensors nodes have limited resources in
121 terms of memory, energy and computational power.
123 Since sensor nodes have limited battery life and since it is impossible to
124 replace batteries, especially in remote and hostile environments, it
125 is desirable that a WSN should be deployed with high density because
126 spatial redundancy can then be exploited to increase the lifetime of
127 the network. In such a high density network, if all sensor nodes were
128 to be activated at the same time, the lifetime would be reduced. To
129 extend the lifetime of the network, the main idea is to take advantage
130 of the overlapping sensing regions of some sensor nodes to save energy
131 by turning off some of them during the sensing phase~\cite{Misra05}.
132 Obviously, the deactivation of nodes is only relevant if the coverage
133 of the monitored area is not affected. In this paper, we concentrate
134 on the area coverage problem \cite{Nayak04}, with the objective of
135 maximizing the network lifetime by using an adaptive scheduling. The
136 area of interest is divided into subregions and an activity scheduling
137 for sensor nodes is planned for each subregion. In fact, the nodes in
138 a subregion can be seen as a cluster where each node sends sensing
139 data to the cluster head or the sink node. Furthermore, the
140 activities in a subregion/cluster can continue even if another cluster
141 stops due to too many node failures. Our scheduling scheme considers
142 rounds, where a round starts with a discovery phase to exchange
143 information between sensors of the subregion, in order to choose in a
144 suitable manner a sensor node to carry out a coverage strategy. This
145 coverage strategy involves the solving of an integer program, which
146 provides the activation of the sensors for the sensing phase of the
149 The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The next section
151 reviews the related work in the field. Section~\ref{pd} is devoted to
152 the scheduling strategy for energy-efficient coverage.
153 Section~\ref{cp} gives the coverage model formulation, which is used
154 to schedule the activation of sensors. Section~\ref{exp} shows the
155 simulation results obtained using the discrete event simulator OMNeT++
156 \cite{varga}. They fully demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed
157 approach. Finally, we give concluding remarks and some suggestions
158 for future works in Section~\ref{sec:conclusion}.
160 \section{Related works}
162 \indent In this section, we only review some recent works dealing with
163 the coverage lifetime maximization problem, where the objective is to
164 optimally schedule sensors' activities in order to extend WSNs
167 In \cite{chin2007}, the author proposed a novel distributed heuristic,
168 called Distributed Energy-efficient Scheduling for k-coverage (DESK),
169 which ensures that the energy consumption among the sensors is
170 balanced and the lifetime maximized while the coverage requirement is
171 maintained. This heuristic works in rounds, requires only 1-hop
172 neighbor information, and each sensor decides its status (active or
173 sleep) based on the perimeter coverage model proposed in
174 \cite{Huang:2003:CPW:941350.941367}. More recently, Shibo et
175 al. \cite{Shibo} expressed the coverage problem as a minimum weight
176 submodular set cover problem and proposed a Distributed Truncated
177 Greedy Algorithm (DTGA) to solve it. They take in particular advantage
178 from both temporal and spatial correlations between data sensed by
181 The works presented in \cite{Bang, Zhixin, Zhang} focus on the
182 definition of coverage-aware, distributed energy-efficient and
183 distributed clustering methods respectively. They aim to extend the
184 network lifetime while ensuring the coverage. S. Misra et al.
185 \cite{Misra05} proposed a localized algorithm which conserves energy and
186 coverage by activating the subset of sensors with the minimum
187 overlapping area. It preserves the network connectivity thanks to the
188 formation of the network backbone. J.~A.~Torkestani \cite{Torkestani}
189 designed a Learning Automata-based Energy-Efficient Coverage protocol
190 (LAEEC) to construct a Degree-constrained Connected Dominating Set
191 (DCDS) in WSNs. He showed that the correct choice of the
192 degree-constraint of DCDS balances the network load on the active
193 nodes and leads to enhance the coverage and network lifetime.
195 The main contribution of our approach addresses three main questions
196 to build a scheduling strategy.\\
199 {\indent \bf How must the phases for information exchange, decision
200 and sensing be planned over time?} Our algorithm divides the timeline into rounds. Each round contains 4 phases: Information Exchange,
201 Leader Election, Decision, and Sensing.
204 {\bf What are the rules to decide which node has to be turned on
205 or off?} Our algorithm tends to limit the overcoverage of points of
206 interest to avoid turning on too many sensors covering the same
207 areas at the same time, and tries to prevent undercoverage. The
208 decision is a good compromise between these two conflicting
212 {\bf Which node should make such a decision?} A leader node should
213 make such a decision. Our work does not consider only one leader to
214 compute and to broadcast the scheduling decision to all the sensors.
215 When the network size increases, the network is divided into many
216 subregions and the decision is made by a leader in each subregion.
219 \section{Activity scheduling}
222 We consider a randomly and uniformly deployed network consisting of
223 static wireless sensors. The wireless sensors are deployed in high
224 density to ensure initially a full coverage of the interested area. We
225 assume that all nodes are homogeneous in terms of communication and
226 processing capabilities and heterogeneous in term of energy provision.
227 The location information is available to the sensor node either
228 through hardware such as embedded GPS or through location discovery
229 algorithms. The area of interest can be divided using the
230 divide-and-conquer strategy into smaller areas called subregions and
231 then our coverage protocol will be implemented in each subregion
232 simultaneously. Our protocol works in rounds fashion as shown in
237 \includegraphics[width=85mm]{FirstModel.eps} % 70mm
238 \caption{Multi-round coverage protocol}
242 Each round is divided into 4 phases : Information (INFO) Exchange,
243 Leader Election, Decision, and Sensing. For each round there is
244 exactly one set cover responsible for the sensing task. This protocol is
245 more reliable against an unexpected node failure because it works
246 in rounds. On the one hand, if a node failure is detected before
247 making the decision, the node will not participate to this phase, and,
248 on the other hand, if the node failure occurs after the decision, the
249 sensing task of the network will be temporarily affected: only during
250 the period of sensing until a new round starts, since a new set cover
251 will take charge of the sensing task in the next round. The energy
252 consumption and some other constraints can easily be taken into
253 account since the sensors can update and then exchange their
254 information (including their residual energy) at the beginning of each
255 round. However, the pre-sensing phases (INFO Exchange, Leader
256 Election, Decision) are energy consuming for some nodes, even when
257 they do not join the network to monitor the area. Below, we describe
258 each phase in more details.
260 \subsection{Information exchange phase}
262 Each sensor node $j$ sends its position, remaining energy $RE_j$, and
263 the number of local neighbours $NBR_j$ to all wireless sensor nodes in
264 its subregion by using an INFO packet and then listens to the packets
265 sent from other nodes. After that, each node will have information
266 about all the sensor nodes in the subregion. In our model, the
267 remaining energy corresponds to the time that a sensor can live in the
270 %\subsection{\textbf Working Phase:}
272 %The working phase works in rounding fashion. Each round include 3 steps described as follow :
274 \subsection{Leader election phase}
275 This step includes choosing the Wireless Sensor Node Leader (WSNL),
276 which will be responsible for executing the coverage algorithm. Each
277 subregion in the area of interest will select its own WSNL
278 independently for each round. All the sensor nodes cooperate to
279 select WSNL. The nodes in the same subregion will select the leader
280 based on the received information from all other nodes in the same
281 subregion. The selection criteria in order of priority are: larger
282 number of neighbours, larger remaining energy, and then in case of
283 equality, larger index.
285 \subsection{Decision phase}
286 The WSNL will solve an integer program (see section~\ref{cp}) to
287 select which sensors will be activated in the following sensing phase
288 to cover the subregion. WSNL will send Active-Sleep packet to each
289 sensor in the subregion based on the algorithm's results.
290 %The main goal in this step after choosing the WSNL is to produce the best representative active nodes set that will take the responsibility of covering the whole region $A^k$ with minimum number of sensor nodes to prolong the lifetime in the wireless sensor network. For our problem, in each round we need to select the minimum set of sensor nodes to improve the lifetime of the network and in the same time taking into account covering the region $A^k$ . We need an optimal solution with tradeoff between our two conflicting objectives.
291 %The above region coverage problem can be formulated as a Multi-objective optimization problem and we can use the Binary Particle Swarm Optimization technique to solve it.
293 \subsection{Sensing phase}
294 Active sensors in the round will execute their sensing task to
295 preserve maximal coverage in the region of interest. We will assume
296 that the cost of keeping a node awake (or asleep) for sensing task is
297 the same for all wireless sensor nodes in the network. Each sensor
298 will receive an Active-Sleep packet from WSNL informing it to stay
299 awake or to go to sleep for a time equal to the period of sensing until
300 starting a new round.
302 %\subsection{Sensing coverage model}
305 %\noindent We try to produce an adaptive scheduling which allows sensors to operate alternatively so as to prolong the network lifetime. For convenience, the notations and assumptions are described first.
306 %The wireless sensor node use the binary disk sensing model by which each sensor node will has a certain sensing range is reserved within a circular disk called radius $R_s$.
307 \indent We consider a boolean disk coverage model which is the most
308 widely used sensor coverage model in the literature. Each sensor has a
309 constant sensing range $R_s$. All space points within a disk centered
310 at the sensor with the radius of the sensing range is said to be
311 covered by this sensor. We also assume that the communication range $R_c \geq 2R_s$ ~\cite{Zhang05}.
318 %%\includegraphics[scale=0.25]{fig1.pdf}\\ %& \includegraphics[scale=0.10]{1.pdf} \\
319 %%(A) Figure 1 & (B) Figure 2
321 %\caption{Unit Circle in radians. }
322 %\label{fig:cluster1}
325 %By using the Unit Circle in figure~\ref{fig:cluster1},
326 %We choose to representEach wireless sensor node will be represented into a selected number of primary points by which we can know if the sensor node is covered or not.
327 % Figure ~\ref{fig:cluster2} shows the selected primary points that represents the area of the sensor node and according to the sensing range of the wireless sensor node.
329 \indent Instead of working with the coverage area, we consider for each
330 sensor a set of points called primary points. We also assume that the
331 sensing disk defined by a sensor is covered if all the primary points of
332 this sensor are covered.
336 %%\includegraphics[scale=0.25]{fig2.pdf}\\ %& \includegraphics[scale=0.10]{1.pdf} \\
337 %%(A) Figure 1 & (B) Figure 2
339 %\caption{Wireless Sensor Node Area Coverage Model.}
340 %\label{fig:cluster2}
342 By knowing the position (point center: ($p_x,p_y$)) of a wireless
343 sensor node and its $R_s$, we calculate the primary points directly
344 based on the proposed model. We use these primary points (that can be
345 increased or decreased if necessary) as references to ensure that the
346 monitored region of interest is covered by the selected set of
347 sensors, instead of using all the points in the area.
349 \indent We can calculate the positions of the selected primary
350 points in the circle disk of the sensing range of a wireless sensor
351 node (see figure~\ref{fig2}) as follows:\\
352 $(p_x,p_y)$ = point center of wireless sensor node\\
354 $X_2=( p_x + R_s * (1), p_y + R_s * (0) )$\\
355 $X_3=( p_x + R_s * (-1), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
356 $X_4=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (1) )$\\
357 $X_5=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (-1 )) $\\
358 $X_6= ( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
359 $X_7=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0))$\\
360 $X_8=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
361 $X_9=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
362 $X_{10}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
363 $X_{11}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
364 $X_{12}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
365 $X_{13}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $.
369 % \begin{multicols}{6}
371 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig21.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(a)
372 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig22.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(b)
373 \includegraphics[scale=0.25]{principles13.eps}
374 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig25.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(d)
375 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig26.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(e)
376 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig27.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(f)
378 \caption{Sensor node represented by 13 primary points}
382 \section{Coverage problem formulation}
386 \indent Our model is based on the model proposed by
387 \cite{pedraza2006} where the objective is to find a maximum number of
388 disjoint cover sets. To accomplish this goal, authors proposed an
389 integer program, which forces undercoverage and overcoverage of targets
390 to become minimal at the same time. They use binary variables
391 $x_{jl}$ to indicate if sensor $j$ belongs to cover set $l$. In our
392 model, we consider binary variables $X_{j}$, which determine the
393 activation of sensor $j$ in the sensing phase of the round. We also
394 consider primary points as targets. The set of primary points is
395 denoted by $P$ and the set of sensors by $J$.
397 \noindent For a primary point $p$, let $\alpha_{jp}$ denote the
398 indicator function of whether the point $p$ is covered, that is:
400 \alpha_{jp} = \left \{
402 1 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$ is covered} \\
403 & \mbox{by sensor node $j$}, \\
404 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
408 The number of active sensors that cover the primary point $p$ is equal
409 to $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j}$ where:
413 1& \mbox{if sensor $j$ is active,} \\
414 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
418 We define the Overcoverage variable $\Theta_{p}$ as:
420 \Theta_{p} = \left \{
422 0 & \mbox{if the primary point}\\
423 & \mbox{$p$ is not covered,}\\
424 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
428 \noindent More precisely, $\Theta_{p}$ represents the number of active
429 sensor nodes minus one that cover the primary point $p$.\\
430 The Undercoverage variable $U_{p}$ of the primary point $p$ is defined
435 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered,} \\
436 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
441 \noindent Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows\\
442 \begin{equation} \label{eq:ip2r}
445 \min \sum_{p \in P} (w_{\theta} \Theta_{p} + w_{U} U_{p})&\\
446 \textrm{subject to :}&\\
447 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, &\forall p \in P\\
449 %\sum_{t \in T} X_{j,t} \leq \frac{RE_j}{e_t} &\forall j \in J \\
451 \Theta_{p}\in \mathbb{N} , &\forall p \in P\\
452 U_{p} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall p \in P \\
453 X_{j} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall j \in J
458 \item $X_{j}$ : indicates whether or not the sensor $j$ is actively
459 sensing in the round (1 if yes and 0 if not);
460 \item $\Theta_{p}$ : {\it overcoverage}, the number of sensors minus
461 one that are covering the primary point $p$;
462 \item $U_{p}$ : {\it undercoverage}, indicates whether or not the primary point
463 $p$ is being covered (1 if not covered and 0 if covered).
466 The first group of constraints indicates that some primary point $p$
467 should be covered by at least one sensor and, if it is not always the
468 case, overcoverage and undercoverage variables help balancing the
469 restriction equations by taking positive values. There are two main
470 objectives. First, we limit the overcoverage of primary points in order to
471 activate a minimum number of sensors. Second we prevent the absence of monitoring on
472 some parts of the subregion by minimizing the undercoverage. The
473 weights $w_\theta$ and $w_U$ must be properly chosen so as to
474 guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each
477 \section{Simulation results}
480 In this section, we conducted a series of simulations to evaluate the
481 efficiency and the relevance of our approach, using the discrete event
482 simulator OMNeT++ \cite{varga}. We performed simulations for five
483 different densities varying from 50 to 250~nodes. Experimental results
484 were obtained from randomly generated networks in which nodes are
485 deployed over a $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ sensing field.
486 More precisely, the deployment is controlled at a coarse scale in
487 order to ensure that the deployed nodes can fully cover the sensing
488 field with the given sensing range.
489 10~simulation runs are performed with
490 different network topologies for each node density. The results
491 presented hereafter are the average of these 10 runs. A simulation
492 ends when all the nodes are dead or the sensor network becomes
493 disconnected (some nodes may not be able to send, to a base station, an
496 Our proposed coverage protocol uses the radio energy dissipation model
497 defined by~\cite{HeinzelmanCB02} as energy consumption model for each
498 wireless sensor node when transmitting or receiving packets. The
499 energy of each node in a network is initialized randomly within the
500 range 24-60~joules, and each sensor node will consume 0.2 watts during
501 the sensing period, which will last 60 seconds. Thus, an
502 active node will consume 12~joules during the sensing phase, while a
503 sleeping node will use 0.002 joules. Each sensor node will not
504 participate in the next round if its remaining energy is less than 12
505 joules. In all experiments, the parameters are set as follows:
506 $R_s=5~m$, $w_{\Theta}=1$, and $w_{U}=|P^2|$.
508 We evaluate the efficiency of our approach by using some performance
509 metrics such as: coverage ratio, number of active nodes ratio, energy
510 saving ratio, energy consumption, network lifetime, execution time,
511 and number of stopped simulation runs. Our approach called strategy~2
512 (with two leaders) works with two subregions, each one having a size
513 of $(25 \times 25)~m^2$. Our strategy will be compared with two other
514 approaches. The first one, called strategy~1 (with one leader), works
515 as strategy~2, but considers only one region of $(50 \times 25)$ $m^2$
516 with only one leader. The other approach, called Simple Heuristic,
517 consists in uniformly dividing the region into squares of $(5 \times
518 5)~m^2$. During the decision phase, in each square, a sensor is
519 randomly chosen, it will remain turned on for the coming sensing
522 \subsection{The impact of the number of rounds on the coverage ratio}
524 In this experiment, the coverage ratio measures how much the area of a
525 sensor field is covered. In our case, the coverage ratio is regarded
526 as the number of primary points covered among the set of all primary
527 points within the field. Figure~\ref{fig3} shows the impact of the
528 number of rounds on the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes
529 for the three approaches. It can be seen that the three approaches
530 give similar coverage ratios during the first rounds. From the
531 9th~round the coverage ratio decreases continuously with the simple
532 heuristic, while the two other strategies provide superior coverage to
533 $90\%$ for five more rounds. Coverage ratio decreases when the number
534 of rounds increases due to dead nodes. Although some nodes are dead,
535 thanks to strategy~1 or~2, other nodes are preserved to ensure the
536 coverage. Moreover, when we have a dense sensor network, it leads to
537 maintain the full coverage for a larger number of rounds. Strategy~2 is
538 slightly more efficient than strategy 1, because strategy~2 subdivides
539 the region into 2~subregions and if one of the two subregions becomes
540 disconnected, the coverage may be still ensured in the remaining
546 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{CR1.eps} %\\~ ~ ~(a)
547 \caption{The impact of the number of rounds on the coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
551 \subsection{The impact of the number of rounds on the active sensors ratio}
553 It is important to have as few active nodes as possible in each round,
554 in order to minimize the communication overhead and maximize the
555 network lifetime. This point is assessed through the Active Sensors
556 Ratio (ASR), which is defined as follows:
559 \mbox{ASR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{Number of active sensors
560 during the current sensing phase}}{\mbox{Total number of sensors in the network
561 for the region}} \times 100.
563 Figure~\ref{fig4} shows the average active nodes ratio versus rounds
564 for 150 deployed nodes.
568 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{ASR1.eps} %\\~ ~ ~(a)
569 \caption{The impact of the number of rounds on the active sensors ratio for 150 deployed nodes }
573 The results presented in figure~\ref{fig4} show the superiority of
574 both proposed strategies, the strategy with two leaders and the one
575 with a single leader, in comparison with the simple heuristic. The
576 strategy with one leader uses less active nodes than the strategy with
577 two leaders until the last rounds, because it uses central control on
578 the whole sensing field. The advantage of the strategy~2 approach is
579 that even if a network is disconnected in one subregion, the other one
580 usually continues the optimization process, and this extends the
581 lifetime of the network.
583 \subsection{Impact of the number of rounds on the energy saving ratio}
585 In this experiment, we consider a performance metric linked to energy.
586 This metric, called Energy Saving Ratio (ESR), is defined by:
589 \mbox{ESR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{Number of alive sensors during this round}}
590 {\mbox{Total number of sensors in the network for the region}} \times 100.
592 The longer the ratio is, the more redundant sensor nodes are
593 switched off, and consequently the longer the network may live.
594 Figure~\ref{fig5} shows the average Energy Saving Ratio versus rounds
595 for all three approaches and for 150 deployed nodes.
599 % \begin{multicols}{6}
601 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{ESR1.eps} %\\~ ~ ~(a)
602 \caption{The impact of the number of rounds on the energy saving ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
606 The simulation results show that our strategies allow to efficiently
607 save energy by turning off some sensors during the sensing phase. As
608 expected, the strategy with one leader is usually slightly better than
609 the second strategy, because the global optimization permits to turn
610 off more sensors. Indeed, when there are two subregions more nodes
611 remain awake near the border shared by them. Note that again as the
612 number of rounds increases the two leaders' strategy becomes the most
613 performing one, since it takes longer to have the two subregion networks
614 simultaneously disconnected.
616 \subsection{The percentage of stopped simulation runs}
618 We will now study the percentage of simulations, which stopped due to
619 network disconnections per round for each of the three approaches.
620 Figure~\ref{fig6} illustrates the percentage of stopped simulation
621 runs per round for 150 deployed nodes. It can be observed that the
622 simple heuristic is the approach, which stops first because the nodes
623 are randomly chosen. Among the two proposed strategies, the
624 centralized one first exhibits network disconnections. Thus, as
625 explained previously, in case of the strategy with several subregions
626 the optimization effectively continues as long as a network in a
627 subregion is still connected. This longer partial coverage
628 optimization participates in extending the network lifetime.
632 \includegraphics[scale=0.36]{SR1.eps}
633 \caption{The percentage of stopped simulation runs compared to the number of rounds for 150 deployed nodes }
637 \subsection{The energy consumption}
639 In this experiment, we study the effect of the multi-hop communication
640 protocol on the performance of the strategy with two leaders and
641 compare it with the other two approaches. The average energy
642 consumption resulting from wireless communications is calculated
643 by taking into account the energy spent by all the nodes when transmitting and
644 receiving packets during the network lifetime. This average value,
645 which is obtained for 10~simulation runs, is then divided by the
646 average number of rounds to define a metric allowing a fair comparison
647 between networks having different densities.
649 Figure~\ref{fig7} illustrates the energy consumption for the different
650 network sizes and the three approaches. The results show that the
651 strategy with two leaders is the most competitive from the energy
652 consumption point of view. A centralized method, like the strategy
653 with one leader, has a high energy consumption due to many
654 communications. In fact, a distributed method greatly reduces the
655 number of communications thanks to the partitioning of the initial
656 network in several independent subnetworks. Let us notice that even if
657 a centralized method consumes far more energy than the simple
658 heuristic, since the energy cost of communications during a round is a
659 small part of the energy spent in the sensing phase, the
660 communications have a small impact on the network lifetime.
664 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{EC1.eps}
665 \caption{The energy consumption}
669 \subsection{The impact of the number of sensors on execution time}
671 A sensor node has limited energy resources and computing power,
672 therefore it is important that the proposed algorithm has the shortest
673 possible execution time. The energy of a sensor node must be mainly
674 used for the sensing phase, not for the pre-sensing ones.
675 Table~\ref{table1} gives the average execution times in seconds
676 on a laptop of the decision phase (solving of the optimization problem)
677 during one round. They are given for the different approaches and
678 various numbers of sensors. The lack of any optimization explains why
679 the heuristic has very low execution times. Conversely, the strategy
680 with one leader, which requires to solve an optimization problem
681 considering all the nodes presents redhibitory execution times.
682 Moreover, increasing the network size by 50~nodes multiplies the time
683 by almost a factor of 10. The strategy with two leaders has more
684 suitable times. We think that in distributed fashion the solving of
685 the optimization problem in a subregion can be tackled by sensor
686 nodes. Overall, to be able to deal with very large networks, a
687 distributed method is clearly required.
690 \caption{EXECUTION TIME(S) VS. NUMBER OF SENSORS}
694 % used for centering table
695 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
696 % centered columns (4 columns)
698 %inserts double horizontal lines
699 Sensors number & Strategy~2 & Strategy~1 & Simple heuristic \\ [0.5ex]
700 & (with two leaders) & (with one leader) & \\ [0.5ex]
701 %Case & Strategy (with Two Leaders) & Strategy (with One Leader) & Simple Heuristic \\ [0.5ex]
705 % inserts single horizontal line
706 50 & 0.097 & 0.189 & 0.001 \\
707 % inserting body of the table
709 100 & 0.419 & 1.972 & 0.0032 \\
711 150 & 1.295 & 13.098 & 0.0032 \\
713 200 & 4.54 & 169.469 & 0.0046 \\
715 250 & 12.252 & 1581.163 & 0.0056 \\
716 % [1ex] adds vertical space
721 % is used to refer this table in the text
724 \subsection{The network lifetime}
726 Finally, we have defined the network lifetime as the time until all
727 nodes have been drained of their energy or each sensor network
728 monitoring an area has become disconnected. In figure~\ref{fig8}, the
729 network lifetime for different network sizes and for both strategy
730 with two leaders and the simple heuristic is illustrated. We do not
731 consider anymore the centralized strategy with one leader, because, as
732 shown above, this strategy results in execution times that quickly
733 become unsuitable for a sensor network.
737 % \begin{multicols}{6}
739 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{LT1.eps} %\\~ ~ ~(a)
740 \caption{The network lifetime }
744 As highlighted by figure~\ref{fig8}, the network lifetime obviously
745 increases when the size of the network increases, with our approach
746 that leads to the larger lifetime improvement. By choosing the best
747 suited nodes, for each round, to cover the region of interest and by
748 letting the other ones sleep in order to be used later in next rounds,
749 our strategy efficiently prolonges the network lifetime. Comparison
750 shows that the larger the sensor number is, the more our strategies
751 outperform the simple heuristic. Strategy~2, which uses two leaders,
752 is the best one because it is robust to network disconnection in one
753 subregion. It also means that distributing the algorithm in each node
754 and subdividing the sensing field into many subregions, which are
755 managed independently and simultaneously, is the most relevant way to
756 maximize the lifetime of a network.
758 \section{Conclusion and future work}
759 \label{sec:conclusion}
761 In this paper, we have addressed the problem of the coverage and the
762 lifetime optimization in WSNs. To cope with this problem, the field of
763 sensing is divided into smaller subregions using the concept of
764 divide-and-conquer method, and then a multi-rounds coverage protocol
765 will optimize coverage and lifetime performances in each subregion.
766 The proposed protocol combines two efficient techniques: network
767 leader election and sensor activity scheduling, where the challenges
768 include how to select the most efficient leader in each subregion and
769 the best representative active nodes. Results from simulations show
770 the relevance of the proposed protocol in terms of lifetime, coverage
771 ratio, active sensors ratio, energy saving, energy consumption,
772 execution time, and the number of stopped simulation runs due to
773 network disconnection. Indeed, when dealing with large and dense
774 wireless sensor networks, a distributed approach like the one we
775 propose allows to reduce the difficulty of a single global
776 optimization problem by partitioning it in many smaller problems, one
777 per subregion, that can be solved more easily. In future work, we
778 plan to study a coverage protocol which computes all active sensor
779 schedules in only one step for many rounds, using optimization methods
780 such as swarms optimization or evolutionary algorithms.
781 % use section* for acknowledgement
782 %\section*{Acknowledgment}
784 \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
785 \bibliography{bare_conf}