A Unifying Framework for Tunable Topology Control in Sensor Networks

Topology control, primarily concerned with ensuring desired levels of coverage and connectivity, is a vital selfconfiguration operation in unattended sensor networks. We present a classification of sensor network topologies and discuss their implications for topology control. Our main contribution is a unifying framework that forms a basis for tunable topology control in all classes of topologies. It is based on a simple, local condition of ensuring a neighbor in every theta (θ) angle sector of each node’s communication range. We present analysis to establish that varying this single parameter θ can indeed provide a wide range of coverage and connectivity tradeoffs. For specific values of θ, we show that the Neighbor-Every-Theta (NET) condition guarantees various proximity graphs such as the relative neighborhood graph. The problem of maximizing coverage given such a condition is also addressed. Algorithms for controlled deployment are presented to demonstrate how the NET condition can be integrated with positioning of nodes for tunable topology control.

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