Coverage-Aware Sensor Engagement in Dense Sensor Networks

Abstract

The critical issue in sensor networks is the search of balance between the limited battery supply and the expected longevity of network operations. Similar goals exist in providing a certain degree of sensing coverage and maintaining a desirable number of sensors to communicate under the energy constraint. We propose a novel sensor network protocol, called Coverage-Aware Sensor Engagement (CASE) for coverage maintenance. Different from others, CASE schedules active/inactive sensing states of a sensor according to the sensor’s contribution to the network sensing coverage. The contribution is quantitatively measured by a metric called coverage merit. By utilizing sensors with large coverage merit, CASE reduces the number of the active sensors required to maintain the level of coverage. Simulation results show that CASE considerably improves the energy efficiency and reduces the computation and communication costs to maintain the required coverage degree in a dense sensor network.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation through grants ANI-0083074 and ANI-9903427, by DARPA through Grant MDA972-99-1-0007, by AFOSR through Grant MURI F49620-00-1-0330, and by grants from the University of California MICRO Program, Hitachi, Hitachi America, Novell, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), NTT Docomo, Fujitsu, and NS-Solutions.