Reduced Node k-coverage in Dense Wireless Sensor Networks

Given a dense Wireless Sensor Network satisfying k-coverage, it is useful to be able to identify those nodes that can be turned off while still maintaining k-coverage. Since this is an NP-hard problem, this paper proposes a heuristic algorithm that iteratively selects a node with the highest current "coverage level," turns that node off, and repeats until k-coverage can no longer be maintained. Simulation results show that the proposed heuristic solution requires significantly fewer nodes, for k-coverage, than previously proposed methods for this problem. In addition, the proposed method is a fast, practical algorithm that can be efficiently implemented in a centralized or distributed manner.