Sensor Activation and Radius Adaptation (SARA) in Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces SARA, an algorithm that prolongs wireless sensor network lifetime by selectively activating sensors and adapting their sensing radii, effectively reducing redundancy and energy use in heterogeneous sensor deployments.

Contribution

SARA is the first algorithm to address coverage redundancy reduction through sensor activation and radius adaptation in heterogeneous sensor networks, considering device heterogeneity and using Laguerre geometry.

Findings

SARA significantly extends network lifetime compared to previous algorithms.

SARA effectively manages heterogeneous sensor coverage capabilities.

Simulation results demonstrate superior performance of SARA across scenarios.

Abstract

In this paper we address the problem of prolonging the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) deployed to monitor an area of interest. In this scenario, a helpful approach is to reduce coverage redundancy and therefore the energy expenditure due to coverage. We introduce the first algorithm which reduces coverage redundancy by means of Sensor Activation and sensing Radius Adaptation (SARA)in a general applicative scenario with two classes of devices: sensors that can adapt their sensing range (adjustable sensors) and sensors that cannot (fixed sensors). In particular, SARA activates only a subset of all the available sensors and reduces the sensing range of the adjustable sensors that have been activated. In doing so, SARA also takes possible heterogeneous coverage capabilities of sensors belonging to the same class into account. It specifically addresses device heterogeneity by modeling the coverage problem in the Laguerre geometry through Voronoi-Laguerre diagrams. SARA executes quickly and is guaranteed to terminate. It provides a configuration of the active set of sensors that lifetime and coverage requirements of demanding WSN applications, not met by current solutions. By means of extensive simulations we show that SARA achieves a network lifetime that is significantly superior to that obtained by previous algorithms in all the considered scenarios.