An Energy-Efficient Communication Scheme in Wireless Cable Sensor Networks

Nowadays wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted a great deal of study due to their low cost and wide-range applications. Most of the sensors used so far are point sensors which have a disc-shaped sensing region. In this paper, we introduce a new type of sensor: the fiber optic cable sensor. Unlike a traditional point sensor, this type of sensor has a rectangular sensing region with a processor installed on it to do processing and communication. Like wireless sensor networks with point sensors, energy-efficient communication is still an important issue in wireless sensor networks with cable sensors because of the need to efficiently use limited resources. To address the issue, we propose a Cable Mode Transition (CMT) algorithm, which determines the minimal number of active sensors to maintain K-coverage of a terrain as well as K-connectivity of the network. Specifically, it allocates periods of inactivity for cable sensors without affecting the coverage and connectivity requirements of the network based only on local information. Before presenting CMT, we first show the relationship between coverage and connectivity, then the eligibility algorithm permitting a cable sensor to decide whether to stay active. CMT calls the eligibility algorithm to schedule cables. Simulation results show that our scheme is efficient in saving energy and thus can prolong the lifetime of wireless cable sensor networks.