Energy-Efficient Scheduling for Multiple-Target Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In wireless sensor network (WSN), scheduling and power management schemes have been researched as key techniques to extend a network lifetime. In conventional studies, it has commonly been assumed that sensors with the same sensing range would gather the same amount of data. Hence, the sensors consume the same amount of energy when transmitting the collected data, regardless of how many targets they observed. In this paper, we address a multiple target coverage problem (MTCP) of WSN in which different sensors will monitor different numbers of targets and a sensor that monitors more targets would gather more data; hence it will consume more transmission energy. In addition, in the MTCP, there exist overlapped targets that are monitored by more than two sensors at the same time. This results in energy being wasted by the sensors due to the overlapped targets. In this paper, we propose energy efficient sensor scheduling schemes for multiple target coverage (MTC) which maximize the network lifetime by considering both the number of targets covered by the sensor and the redundancy of overlapped targets. This paper introduces two sensor scheduling schemes: optimization scheme and heuristic scheme and verifies power saving results through simulation.