Partly Centralized Partly Distributed Energy Efficient Sleep/Wake Scheduling in Wireless Sensor Networks for Applications Requiring Continuous Sensing

Abstract

A wireless sensor network requires judicious utilization of its limited energy resources. As a result, the energy efficient algorithms have become a pre-requisite for healthy and prolonged functioning of these networks. Consequently, the present work minimizes the energy expenditure, maximizes the node utilization, incurs lesser state switching, and prolongs the network lifetime by proposing a partly centralized and partly distributed sleep wake scheduling for the overlapped dominating sets. The concepts of such a hybrid scheduling and overlapped dominating sets have not been explored to their full potential for continuous sensing. Therefore, the research work presented in this paper shall be a stepping stone to further explore the suggested concept for the purpose of reducing energy consumption in wireless sensor networks. It is envisioned that the proposed approach shall be beneficial in battlefield monitoring, security surveillance, environmental monitoring etc., which necessitate long-term continuous/non-periodic coverage of the target region. The proposed sleep wake scheduling algorithm is hybrid in nature and possesses the advantages of both distributed and centralized approaches. The superiority and significance of the results have been established by a comparative analysis with other existing techniques mentioned in the literature.