A coverage-preserving node scheduling scheme for large wireless sensor networks

TLDR

In wireless sensor networks composed of many low‑power, short‑lived, unreliable sensors, achieving long system lifetime while maintaining sufficient coverage and reliability is a primary design challenge. The paper proposes a node‑scheduling scheme that reduces overall energy consumption and extends system lifetime by turning off redundant nodes. The scheme employs a coverage‑based off‑duty eligibility rule and a backoff‑based scheduling algorithm, implemented as an NS‑2 extension of LEACH, and its energy savings are evaluated by comparing LEACH with and without the extension. Simulations demonstrate that the scheme preserves coverage to the maximum extent while still maintaining sufficient redundancy for reliable sensing.

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks that consist of a large number of low-power, short-lived, unreliable sensors, one of the main design challenges is to obtain long system lifetime, as well as maintain sufficient sensing coverage and reliability. In this paper, we propose a node-scheduling scheme, which can reduce system overall energy consumption, therefore increasing system lifetime, by turning off some redundant nodes. Our coverage-based off-duty eligibility rule and backoff-based node-scheduling scheme guarantees that the original sensing coverage is maintained after turning off redundant nodes. We implement our proposed scheme in NS-2 as an extension of the LEACH protocol. We compare the energy consumption of LEACH with and without the extension and analyze the effectiveness of our scheme in terms of energy saving. Simulation results show that our scheme can preserve the system coverage to the maximum extent. In addition, after the node-scheduling scheme turns off some nodes, certain redundancy is still guaranteed, which we believe can provide enough sensing reliability in many applications.