A Reliable Energy Efficient Algorithm for Target Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

A critical aspect of applications in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is network lifetime. Power-constrained WSNs are usable as long as they can communicate sensed data to a processing node. Poor communication links and hazard environment make the WSNs unreliable. The existing schemes only consider that the state of a sensor covering targets is in binary mode: success (cover the targets) or fail (cannot cover the targets). However in the real WSNs, a sensor covers targets with a certain probability. To improve WSNs´ reliability, we should consider the fact that a sensor covers targets with users´satisfied probability. To solve the above problem, this paper first introduces failure probability into target coverage problems to improve and control the system´s reliability. Furthermore, we model the solution as the Maximum Reliability Sensor Covers (MRSC)problem and design a heuristic greedy algorithm that efficiently compute the maximal number of reliable sensor covers. To efficiently extend the WSNs´ lifetime with users´ pre-defined failure probability requirements, only the sensors from the current active sensor cover is responsible for monitoring all targets, while all other sensors are in a low-energy sleep mode. Finally, simulation results validate the performance of our proposed algorithm, in which users can precisely control the system´s reliability without sacrificing the energy consumption too much.