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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 of 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 without being able 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 a 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 time
201 line into rounds. Each round contains 4 phases: Information Exchange,
202 Leader Election, Decision, and Sensing.
205 {\bf What are the rules to decide which node has to be turned on
206 or off?} Our algorithm tends to limit the overcoverage of points of
207 interest to avoid turning on too many sensors covering the same
208 areas at the same time, and tries to prevent undercoverage. The
209 decision is a good compromise between these two conflicting
213 {\bf Which node should make such a decision?} A leader node should
214 make such a decision. Our work does not consider only one leader to
215 compute and to broadcast the scheduling decision to all the sensors.
216 When the network size increases, the network is divided into many
217 subregions and the decision is made by a leader in each subregion.
220 \section{Activity scheduling}
223 We consider a randomly and uniformly deployed network consisting of
224 static wireless sensors. The wireless sensors are deployed in high
225 density to ensure initially a full coverage of the interested area. We
226 assume that all nodes are homogeneous in terms of communication and
227 processing capabilities and heterogeneous in term of energy provision.
228 The location information is available to the sensor node either
229 through hardware such as embedded GPS or through location discovery
230 algorithms. The area of interest can be divided using the
231 divide-and-conquer strategy into smaller areas called subregions and
232 then our coverage protocol will be implemented in each subregion
233 simultaneously. Our protocol works in rounds fashion as shown in
238 \includegraphics[width=85mm]{FirstModel.eps} % 70mm
239 \caption{Multi-round coverage protocol}
243 Each round is divided into 4 phases : Information (INFO) Exchange,
244 Leader Election, Decision, and Sensing. For each round there is
245 exactly one set cover responsible for the sensing task. This protocol is
246 more reliable against an unexpected node failure because it works
247 in rounds. On the one hand, if a node failure is detected before
248 making the decision, the node will not participate to this phase, and,
249 on the other hand, if the node failure occurs after the decision, the
250 sensing task of the network will be temporarily affected: only during
251 the period of sensing until a new round starts, since a new set cover
252 will take charge of the sensing task in the next round. The energy
253 consumption and some other constraints can easily be taken into
254 account since the sensors can update and then exchange their
255 information (including their residual energy) at the beginning of each
256 round. However, the pre-sensing phases (INFO Exchange, Leader
257 Election, Decision) are energy consuming for some nodes, even when
258 they do not join the network to monitor the area. Below, we describe
259 each phase in more details.
261 \subsection{Information exchange phase}
263 Each sensor node $j$ sends its position, remaining energy $RE_j$, and
264 the number of local neighbours $NBR_j$ to all wireless sensor nodes in
265 its subregion by using an INFO packet and then listens to the packets
266 sent from other nodes. After that, each node will have information
267 about all the sensor nodes in the subregion. In our model, the
268 remaining energy corresponds to the time that a sensor can live in the
271 %\subsection{\textbf Working Phase:}
273 %The working phase works in rounding fashion. Each round include 3 steps described as follow :
275 \subsection{Leader election phase}
276 This step includes choosing the Wireless Sensor Node Leader (WSNL),
277 which will be responsible for executing the coverage algorithm. Each
278 subregion in the area of interest will select its own WSNL
279 independently for each round. All the sensor nodes cooperate to
280 select WSNL. The nodes in the same subregion will select the leader
281 based on the received information from all other nodes in the same
282 subregion. The selection criteria in order of priority are: larger
283 number of neighbours, larger remaining energy, and then in case of
284 equality, larger index.
286 \subsection{Decision phase}
287 The WSNL will solve an integer program (see section~\ref{cp}) to
288 select which sensors will be activated in the following sensing phase
289 to cover the subregion. WSNL will send Active-Sleep packet to each
290 sensor in the subregion based on the algorithm's results.
291 %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.
292 %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.
294 \subsection{Sensing phase}
295 Active sensors in the round will execute their sensing task to
296 preserve maximal coverage in the region of interest. We will assume
297 that the cost of keeping a node awake (or asleep) for sensing task is
298 the same for all wireless sensor nodes in the network. Each sensor
299 will receive an Active-Sleep packet from WSNL informing it to stay
300 awake or to go to sleep for a time equal to the period of sensing until
301 starting a new round.
303 %\subsection{Sensing coverage model}
306 %\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.
307 %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 $R_s$.
308 \indent We consider a boolean disk coverage model which is the most
309 widely used sensor coverage model in the literature. Each sensor has a
310 constant sensing range $R_s$. All space points within a disk centered
311 at the sensor with the radius of the sensing range is said to be
312 covered by this sensor. We also assume that the communication range $R_c \geq 2R_s$ ~\cite{Zhang05}.
319 %%\includegraphics[scale=0.25]{fig1.pdf}\\ %& \includegraphics[scale=0.10]{1.pdf} \\
320 %%(A) Figure 1 & (B) Figure 2
322 %\caption{Unit Circle in radians. }
323 %\label{fig:cluster1}
326 %By using the Unit Circle in figure~\ref{fig:cluster1},
327 %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.
328 % 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.
330 \indent Instead of working with the coverage area, we consider for each
331 sensor a set of points called primary points. We also assume that the
332 sensing disk defined by a sensor is covered if all the primary points of
333 this sensor are covered.
337 %%\includegraphics[scale=0.25]{fig2.pdf}\\ %& \includegraphics[scale=0.10]{1.pdf} \\
338 %%(A) Figure 1 & (B) Figure 2
340 %\caption{Wireless Sensor Node Area Coverage Model.}
341 %\label{fig:cluster2}
343 By knowing the position (point center: ($p_x,p_y$)) of a wireless
344 sensor node and its $R_s$, we calculate the primary points directly
345 based on the proposed model. We use these primary points (that can be
346 increased or decreased if necessary) as references to ensure that the
347 monitored region of interest is covered by the selected set of
348 sensors, instead of using all the points in the area.
350 \indent We can calculate the positions of the selected primary
351 points in the circle disk of the sensing range of a wireless sensor
352 node (see figure~\ref{fig2}) as follows:\\
353 $(p_x,p_y)$ = point center of wireless sensor node\\
355 $X_2=( p_x + R_s * (1), p_y + R_s * (0) )$\\
356 $X_3=( p_x + R_s * (-1), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
357 $X_4=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (1) )$\\
358 $X_5=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (-1 )) $\\
359 $X_6= ( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0)) $\\
360 $X_7=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (0))$\\
361 $X_8=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
362 $X_9=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
363 $X_{10}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
364 $X_{11}=( p_x + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
365 $X_{12}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2})) $\\
366 $X_{13}=( p_x + R_s * (0), p_y + R_s * (\frac{-\sqrt{2}}{2})) $.
370 % \begin{multicols}{6}
372 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig21.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(a)
373 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig22.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(b)
374 \includegraphics[scale=0.25]{principles13.eps}
375 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig25.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(d)
376 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig26.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(e)
377 %\includegraphics[scale=0.10]{fig27.pdf}\\~ ~ ~(f)
379 \caption{Sensor node represented by 13 primary points}
383 \section{Coverage problem formulation}
387 \indent Our model is based on the model proposed by
388 \cite{pedraza2006} where the objective is to find a maximum number of
389 disjoint cover sets. To accomplish this goal, authors proposed an
390 integer program, which forces undercoverage and overcoverage of targets
391 to become minimal at the same time. They use binary variables
392 $x_{jl}$ to indicate if sensor $j$ belongs to cover set $l$. In our
393 model, we consider binary variables $X_{j}$, which determine the
394 activation of sensor $j$ in the sensing phase of the round. We also
395 consider primary points as targets. The set of primary points is
396 denoted by $P$ and the set of sensors by $J$.
398 \noindent For a primary point $p$, let $\alpha_{jp}$ denote the
399 indicator function of whether the point $p$ is covered, that is:
401 \alpha_{jp} = \left \{
403 1 & \mbox{if the primary point $p$ is covered} \\
404 & \mbox{by sensor node $j$}, \\
405 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
409 The number of active sensors that cover the primary point $p$ is equal
410 to $\sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j}$ where:
414 1& \mbox{if sensor $j$ is active,} \\
415 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
419 We define the Overcoverage variable $\Theta_{p}$ as:
421 \Theta_{p} = \left \{
423 0 & \mbox{if the primary point}\\
424 & \mbox{$p$ is not covered,}\\
425 \left( \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} * X_{j} \right)- 1 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
429 \noindent More precisely, $\Theta_{p}$ represents the number of active
430 sensor nodes minus one that cover the primary point $p$.\\
431 The Undercoverage variable $U_{p}$ of the primary point $p$ is defined
436 1 &\mbox{if the primary point $p$ is not covered,} \\
437 0 & \mbox{otherwise.}\\
442 \noindent Our coverage optimization problem can then be formulated as follows\\
443 \begin{equation} \label{eq:ip2r}
446 \min \sum_{p \in P} (w_{\theta} \Theta_{p} + w_{U} U_{p})&\\
447 \textrm{subject to :}&\\
448 \sum_{j \in J} \alpha_{jp} X_{j} - \Theta_{p}+ U_{p} =1, &\forall p \in P\\
450 %\sum_{t \in T} X_{j,t} \leq \frac{RE_j}{e_t} &\forall j \in J \\
452 \Theta_{p}\in \mathbb{N} , &\forall p \in P\\
453 U_{p} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall p \in P \\
454 X_{j} \in \{0,1\}, &\forall j \in J
459 \item $X_{j}$ : indicates whether or not the sensor $j$ is actively
460 sensing in the round (1 if yes and 0 if not);
461 \item $\Theta_{p}$ : {\it overcoverage}, the number of sensors minus
462 one that are covering the primary point $p$;
463 \item $U_{p}$ : {\it undercoverage}, indicates whether or not the primary point
464 $p$ is being covered (1 if not covered and 0 if covered).
467 The first group of constraints indicates that some primary point $p$
468 should be covered by at least one sensor and, if it is not always the
469 case, overcoverage and undercoverage variables help balancing the
470 restriction equations by taking positive values. There are two main
471 objectives. First, we limit the overcoverage of primary points in order to
472 activate a minimum number of sensors. Second we prevent the absence of monitoring on
473 some parts of the subregion by minimizing the undercoverage. The
474 weights $w_\theta$ and $w_U$ must be properly chosen so as to
475 guarantee that the maximum number of points are covered during each
478 \section{Simulation results}
481 In this section, we conducted a series of simulations to evaluate the
482 efficiency and the relevance of our approach, using the discrete event
483 simulator OMNeT++ \cite{varga}. We performed simulations for five
484 different densities varying from 50 to 250~nodes. Experimental results
485 were obtained from randomly generated networks in which nodes are
486 deployed over a $(50 \times 25)~m^2 $ sensing field.
487 More precisely, the deployment is controlled at a coarse scale in
488 order to ensure that the deployed nodes can fully cover the sensing
489 field with the given sensing range.
490 10~simulation runs are performed with
491 different network topologies for each node density. The results
492 presented hereafter are the average of these 10 runs. A simulation
493 ends when all the nodes are dead or the sensor network becomes
494 disconnected (some nodes may not be able to send, to a base station, an
497 Our proposed coverage protocol uses the radio energy dissipation model
498 defined by~\cite{HeinzelmanCB02} as energy consumption model for each
499 wireless sensor node when transmitting or receiving packets. The
500 energy of each node in a network is initialized randomly within the
501 range 24-60~joules, and each sensor node will consume 0.2 watts during
502 the sensing period, which will last 60 seconds. Thus, an
503 active node will consume 12~joules during the sensing phase, while a
504 sleeping node will use 0.002 joules. Each sensor node will not
505 participate in the next round if its remaining energy is less than 12
506 joules. In all experiments, the parameters are set as follows:
507 $R_s=5~m$, $w_{\Theta}=1$, and $w_{U}=|P^2|$.
509 We evaluate the efficiency of our approach by using some performance
510 metrics such as: coverage ratio, number of active nodes ratio, energy
511 saving ratio, energy consumption, network lifetime, execution time,
512 and number of stopped simulation runs. Our approach called strategy~2
513 (with two leaders) works with two subregions, each one having a size
514 of $(25 \times 25)~m^2$. Our strategy will be compared with two other
515 approaches. The first one, called strategy~1 (with one leader), works
516 as strategy~2, but considers only one region of $(50 \times 25)$ $m^2$
517 with only one leader. The other approach, called Simple Heuristic,
518 consists in uniformly dividing the region into squares of $(5 \times
519 5)~m^2$. During the decision phase, in each square, a sensor is
520 randomly chosen, it will remain turned on for the coming sensing
523 \subsection{The impact of the number of rounds on the coverage ratio}
525 In this experiment, the coverage ratio measures how much the area of a
526 sensor field is covered. In our case, the coverage ratio is regarded
527 as the number of primary points covered among the set of all primary
528 points within the field. Figure~\ref{fig3} shows the impact of the
529 number of rounds on the average coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes
530 for the three approaches. It can be seen that the three approaches
531 give similar coverage ratios during the first rounds. From the
532 9th~round the coverage ratio decreases continuously with the simple
533 heuristic, while the two other strategies provide superior coverage to
534 $90\%$ for five more rounds. Coverage ratio decreases when the number
535 of rounds increases due to dead nodes. Although some nodes are dead,
536 thanks to strategy~1 or~2, other nodes are preserved to ensure the
537 coverage. Moreover, when we have a dense sensor network, it leads to
538 maintain the full coverage for a larger number of rounds. Strategy~2 is
539 slightly more efficient than strategy 1, because strategy~2 subdivides
540 the region into 2~subregions and if one of the two subregions becomes
541 disconnected, the coverage may be still ensured in the remaining
547 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{CR1.eps} %\\~ ~ ~(a)
548 \caption{The impact of the number of rounds on the coverage ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
552 \subsection{The impact of the number of rounds on the active sensors ratio}
554 It is important to have as few active nodes as possible in each round,
555 in order to minimize the communication overhead and maximize the
556 network lifetime. This point is assessed through the Active Sensors
557 Ratio (ASR), which is defined as follows:
560 \mbox{ASR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{Number of active sensors
561 during the current sensing phase}}{\mbox{Total number of sensors in the network
562 for the region}} \times 100.
564 Figure~\ref{fig4} shows the average active nodes ratio versus rounds
565 for 150 deployed nodes.
569 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{ASR1.eps} %\\~ ~ ~(a)
570 \caption{The impact of the number of rounds on the active sensors ratio for 150 deployed nodes }
574 The results presented in figure~\ref{fig4} show the superiority of
575 both proposed strategies, the strategy with two leaders and the one
576 with a single leader, in comparison with the simple heuristic. The
577 strategy with one leader uses less active nodes than the strategy with
578 two leaders until the last rounds, because it uses central control on
579 the whole sensing field. The advantage of the strategy~2 approach is
580 that even if a network is disconnected in one subregion, the other one
581 usually continues the optimization process, and this extends the
582 lifetime of the network.
584 \subsection{Impact of the number of rounds on the energy saving ratio}
586 In this experiment, we consider a performance metric linked to energy.
587 This metric, called Energy Saving Ratio (ESR), is defined by:
590 \mbox{ESR}(\%) = \frac{\mbox{Number of alive sensors during this round}}
591 {\mbox{Total number of sensors in the network for the region}} \times 100.
593 The longer the ratio is, the more redundant sensor nodes are
594 switched off, and consequently the longer the network may live.
595 Figure~\ref{fig5} shows the average Energy Saving Ratio versus rounds
596 for all three approaches and for 150 deployed nodes.
600 % \begin{multicols}{6}
602 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{ESR1.eps} %\\~ ~ ~(a)
603 \caption{The impact of the number of rounds on the energy saving ratio for 150 deployed nodes}
607 The simulation results show that our strategies allow to efficiently
608 save energy by turning off some sensors during the sensing phase. As
609 expected, the strategy with one leader is usually slightly better than
610 the second strategy, because the global optimization permits to turn
611 off more sensors. Indeed, when there are two subregions more nodes
612 remain awake near the border shared by them. Note that again as the
613 number of rounds increases the two leaders' strategy becomes the most
614 performing one, since it takes longer to have the two subregion networks
615 simultaneously disconnected.
617 \subsection{The percentage of stopped simulation runs}
619 We will now study the percentage of simulations, which stopped due to
620 network disconnections per round for each of the three approaches.
621 Figure~\ref{fig6} illustrates the percentage of stopped simulation
622 runs per round for 150 deployed nodes. It can be observed that the
623 simple heuristic is the approach, which stops first because the nodes
624 are randomly chosen. Among the two proposed strategies, the
625 centralized one first exhibits network disconnections. Thus, as
626 explained previously, in case of the strategy with several subregions
627 the optimization effectively continues as long as a network in a
628 subregion is still connected. This longer partial coverage
629 optimization participates in extending the network lifetime.
633 \includegraphics[scale=0.36]{SR1.eps}
634 \caption{The percentage of stopped simulation runs compared to the number of rounds for 150 deployed nodes }
638 \subsection{The energy consumption}
640 In this experiment, we study the effect of the multi-hop communication
641 protocol on the performance of the strategy with two leaders and
642 compare it with the other two approaches. The average energy
643 consumption resulting from wireless communications is calculated
644 by taking into account the energy spent by all the nodes when transmitting and
645 receiving packets during the network lifetime. This average value,
646 which is obtained for 10~simulation runs, is then divided by the
647 average number of rounds to define a metric allowing a fair comparison
648 between networks having different densities.
650 Figure~\ref{fig7} illustrates the energy consumption for the different
651 network sizes and the three approaches. The results show that the
652 strategy with two leaders is the most competitive from the energy
653 consumption point of view. A centralized method, like the strategy
654 with one leader, has a high energy consumption due to many
655 communications. In fact, a distributed method greatly reduces the
656 number of communications thanks to the partitioning of the initial
657 network in several independent subnetworks. Let us notice that even if
658 a centralized method consumes far more energy than the simple
659 heuristic, since the energy cost of communications during a round is a
660 small part of the energy spent in the sensing phase, the
661 communications have a small impact on the network lifetime.
665 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{EC1.eps}
666 \caption{The energy consumption}
670 \subsection{The impact of the number of sensors on execution time}
672 A sensor node has limited energy resources and computing power,
673 therefore it is important that the proposed algorithm has the shortest
674 possible execution time. The energy of a sensor node must be mainly
675 used for the sensing phase, not for the pre-sensing ones.
676 Table~\ref{table1} gives the average execution times in seconds
677 on a laptop of the decision phase (solving of the optimization problem)
678 during one round. They are given for the different approaches and
679 various numbers of sensors. The lack of any optimization explains why
680 the heuristic has very low execution times. Conversely, the strategy
681 with one leader, which requires to solve an optimization problem
682 considering all the nodes presents redhibitory execution times.
683 Moreover, increasing the network size by 50~nodes multiplies the time
684 by almost a factor of 10. The strategy with two leaders has more
685 suitable times. We think that in distributed fashion the solving of
686 the optimization problem in a subregion can be tackled by sensor
687 nodes. Overall, to be able to deal with very large networks, a
688 distributed method is clearly required.
691 \caption{EXECUTION TIME(S) VS. NUMBER OF SENSORS}
695 % used for centering table
696 \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|c|}
697 % centered columns (4 columns)
699 %inserts double horizontal lines
700 Sensors number & Strategy~2 & Strategy~1 & Simple heuristic \\ [0.5ex]
701 & (with two leaders) & (with one leader) & \\ [0.5ex]
702 %Case & Strategy (with Two Leaders) & Strategy (with One Leader) & Simple Heuristic \\ [0.5ex]
706 % inserts single horizontal line
707 50 & 0.097 & 0.189 & 0.001 \\
708 % inserting body of the table
710 100 & 0.419 & 1.972 & 0.0032 \\
712 150 & 1.295 & 13.098 & 0.0032 \\
714 200 & 4.54 & 169.469 & 0.0046 \\
716 250 & 12.252 & 1581.163 & 0.0056 \\
717 % [1ex] adds vertical space
722 % is used to refer this table in the text
725 \subsection{The network lifetime}
727 Finally, we have defined the network lifetime as the time until all
728 nodes have been drained of their energy or each sensor network
729 monitoring an area has become disconnected. In figure~\ref{fig8}, the
730 network lifetime for different network sizes and for both strategy
731 with two leaders and the simple heuristic is illustrated. We do not
732 consider anymore the centralized strategy with one leader, because, as
733 shown above, this strategy results in execution times that quickly
734 become unsuitable for a sensor network.
738 % \begin{multicols}{6}
740 \includegraphics[scale=0.37]{LT1.eps} %\\~ ~ ~(a)
741 \caption{The network lifetime }
745 As highlighted by figure~\ref{fig8}, the network lifetime obviously
746 increases when the size of the network increases, with our approach
747 that leads to the larger lifetime improvement. By choosing the best
748 suited nodes, for each round, to cover the region of interest and by
749 letting the other ones sleep in order to be used later in next rounds,
750 our strategy efficiently prolonges the network lifetime. Comparison
751 shows that the larger the sensor number is, the more our strategies
752 outperform the simple heuristic. Strategy~2, which uses two leaders,
753 is the best one because it is robust to network disconnection in one
754 subregion. It also means that distributing the algorithm in each node
755 and subdividing the sensing field into many subregions, which are
756 managed independently and simultaneously, is the most relevant way to
757 maximize the lifetime of a network.
759 \section{Conclusion and future work}
760 \label{sec:conclusion}
762 In this paper, we have addressed the problem of the coverage and the
763 lifetime optimization in WSNs. To cope with this problem, the field of
764 sensing is divided into smaller subregions using the concept of
765 divide-and-conquer method, and then a multi-rounds coverage protocol
766 will optimize coverage and lifetime performances in each subregion.
767 The proposed protocol combines two efficient techniques: network
768 leader election and sensor activity scheduling, where the challenges
769 include how to select the most efficient leader in each subregion and
770 the best representative active nodes. Results from simulations show
771 the relevance of the proposed protocol in terms of lifetime, coverage
772 ratio, active sensors ratio, energy saving, energy consumption,
773 execution time, and the number of stopped simulation runs due to
774 network disconnection. Indeed, when dealing with large and dense
775 wireless sensor networks, a distributed approach like the one we
776 propose allows to reduce the difficulty of a single global
777 optimization problem by partitioning it in many smaller problems, one
778 per subregion, that can be solved more easily. In future work, we
779 plan to study a coverage protocol which computes all active sensor
780 schedules in one time, using optimization methods such as swarms
781 optimization or evolutionary algorithms.
782 % use section* for acknowledgement
783 %\section*{Acknowledgment}
785 \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
786 \bibliography{bare_conf}