Achieving guaranteed connected coverage by using virtual hexagonal partition in wireless sensor networks

Node provisioning in wireless sensor networks is very high density and is a cause of data duplication. Therefore, sensors´ duty-cycling is a significant process in order to reduce data load and prolong network lifetime, where certain sensors are selected to be active, while some others are pushed into sleep mode. However, quality of service in terms of network connectivity and sensing coverage must be guaranteed. This paper proposes a sensor selection method to guarantee connected coverage by using hexagonal tessellation as a virtual partition which consists of many hexagonal cells across the network. Six pieces of equilateral triangles in each hexagonal cell are target areas in which k sensors are selected to operate. Performance of the method is evaluated in terms of quality of connected coverage, number of active nodes, efficient coverage area and chance of node selection.