We propose several localized sensor area coverage protocols for heterogeneous sensors, each with arbitrary sensing and transmission radii. Sensors are assumed to be time synchronized, and active sensors are determined at the beginning of each round. The approach has a very small communication overhead since prior knowledge about neighbor existence is not required. Each node selects a random timeout and listens to messages sent by other nodes before the timeout expires. Sensor nodes whose sensing area is not fully covered (or fully covered but with a disconnected set of active sensors) when the deadline expires decide to remain active for the considered round, and transmit an activity message announcing it. There are four variants in our approach, depending on whether or not withdrawal and retreat messages are transmitted. Covered nodes decide to sleep, with or without transmitting withdrawal message to inform neighbors about the status. After hearing from more neighbors, active sensors may observe that they became covered, and may decide to alter their original decision and transmit a retreat message. Our simulation shows reduced message overhead while preserving coverage quality compared to existing method based on hello messages followed by retreat ones.

Wireless sensor networks are made up of hundreds of devices deployed over a distant or sensitive field to be monitored. Energy consumption is balanced by taking advantage of the redundancy induced by the random deployment of nodes. Some nodes are active while others are in sleep mode, thus using less energy. Such a dynamic topology should not impact the monitoring activity. Area coverage protocols aim at turning off redundant sensor nodes while ensuring full coverage of the area by the remaining active nodes. Providing k-area coverage therefore means that every physical point of the monitored field is sensed by at least fc sensor devices. Connectivity of the active nodes subset must also be provided so that monitoring reports can reach the sink stations. Existing solutions hardly address these two issues as a unified one. In this paper, we propose a localized algorithm for multiple sensor area coverage able to build connected active nodes sets. We also show that a simple feature of the protocol, called the coverage evaluation scheme, can be enhanced to handle various k-area coverage problem definitions. Experimental results show that our coverage scheme is resistant to collisions of messages as k-area-coverage of the deployment area and connectivity of the active nodes set can still be ensured.

We consider the problem of activity scheduling and area coverage in sensor networks, and especially focus on problems that arise when using a more realistic physical layer. Indeed, most of the previous work in this area has been studied within an ideal environment, where messages are always correctly received. In this paper, we argue that protocols developed with such an assumption can hardly provide satisfying results in a more realistic world. To show this, we replace the classic unit disk graph model by the lognormal shadowing one. The results show that either the resulting area coverage is not sufficient or the percentage of active nodes is very high. We thus present an original method, where a node decides to turn off when there exists in its vicinity a sufficiently reliable covering set of neighbors. We show that our solution is very efficient as it preserves area coverage while minimizing the quantity of active nodes.

We propose several localized sensor area coverage protocols, for arbitrary ratio of sensing and transmission radii. Sensors are assumed to be time synchronized, and active sensors are determined at the beginning of each round. The approach has a very small communication overhead since prior knowledge about neighbor existence is not required. Each node selects a random timeout and listens to messages sent by other nodes before the timeout expires. Sensor nodes whose sensing area is not fully covered (or fully covered but with a disconnected set of active sensors) when the deadline expires decide to remain active for the considered round, and transmit a message announcing their activity status. There are four variants in our approach, depending on whether or not negative and retreat messages are transmitted. Experimental results with ideal MAC layer show that, for a similar number of selected active sensors, our methods significantly reduce number of messages to decide activity compared to existing localized protocol, we also consider a MAC layer with collisions, and show that existing compared method, for dense networks, fails to cover the area reasonably. Our methods, however, still remain robust in terms of high area coverage with reasonable amount of active nodes, despite some message collisions.

Sensor networks consist of autonomous nodes with limited battery and of base stations with theoretical infinite energy. Nodes can be sleep to extend the lifespan of the network without compromising neither area coverage nor network connectivity. This paper addresses the area coverage problem with equal sensing and communicating radii. The goal is to minimize the number of active sensors involved in coverage task, while computing a connected set able to report to monitoring stations. Our solution is fully localized, and each sensor is able to make decision on whether to sleep or to be active based on two messages sent by each sensor. The first message is a "hello" message to gather position of all neighboring nodes. Then each node computes its own relay area dominating set, by taking the furthest neighbor as the first node, and then adding neighbors farthest to the isobarycenter of already selected neighbors, until the area covered by neighbors is fully covered. The second message broadcasts this relay set to neighbors. Each node decides to be active if it has highest priority among its neighbors or is a relay node for its neighbor with the highest priority.