Group scheduling problems in directional sensor networks

This article addresses the problem of scheduling a set of groups of directional sensors arising as a result of applying an exact or a heuristic approach for solving a problem involving directional sensors. The problem seeks a schedule for these groups that minimizes the total energy consumed in switching from one group to the next group in the schedule. In practice, when switching from a group to the next one, active sensors in the new group have to rotate in order to face their working direction. These rotations consume energy, and the problem is to schedule the groups so as to minimize the total amount of energy consumed by all the sensor rotations, knowing the initial angular positions of all the sensors. In this article, it is assumed that energy consumption is proportional to the angular movement for all the sensors. Another problem version is also investigated that seeks to minimize the total time during which the sensor network cannot cover all the targets because active sensors are rotating. Both problems are proved to be -hard, and a lower bound for the first problem is presented. A greedy heuristic and a genetic algorithm are also proposed for addressing the problem of minimizing total rotation in the general case. Finally, a local search is also proposed to improve the solutions obtained through a genetic algorithm.