An Improved Energy-Efficient Scheduling for k-Coverage Problem in Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network is a system of small wireless nodes where each node has a sensing, communication and computation capabilities. Each sensor has sensing range R s and communication range R c where R c ≥2R s always. Sensors can sense within its sensing range and can communicate to all its neighbors’ of distance (R c ). Assuming WSN is homogenous and all sensors have same sensing and communication capability. Some sensor application has sensitive region (targeted area) which requires each point in the region to be covered by multiple sensors ( k -covered). In wireless sensor network a targeted area is said to be k -covered (where K is an integer value), if every point in this area is covered by at least K actual sensors. In our work, we focus our attention on the coverage problem. Firstly, we define the Energy-efficient Scheduling for k -coverage (ESK) problem. We then solve it by proposing a novel, completely new scheduling approach, naming Improved Energy-efficient Scheduling for k -coverage (IESK) such that the energy consumption among all the sensors is balanced, and the network lifetime is maximized while still satisfying the k -coverage requirement. The correctness as well as its performance and efficiency are confirmed by providing both theoretical analysis and simulation results.