Partial Target Coverage Problem in Surveillance Sensor Networks

This paper deals with the partial target coverage (PTC) problem in wireless sensor networks with the objective of optimizing network lifetime. We first build a linear programming formulation, which takes total time a sensor spends on covering some targets into consideration, in order to obtain a lifetime upper bound. Then, based on the information of this formulation, we develop a sensor assignment algorithm to seek an optimal time table meeting the lifetime upper bound. A formal proof of optimality is given. We compare the proposed algorithm with a state-of-the-art algorithm: column generation approach and show that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms in terms of computational time. Experiments have been conducted to study the effect of network parameters on network lifetime and interesting insights have been offered.