Distributed Energy-Efficient Scheduling Approach for K-Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

In sensor networks, it is desired to conserve energy so that the network lifetime can be maximized. An efficient approach to prolong the network lifetime is to identify a schedule for all the sensors, indicating which subset of the sensors can be active during the current time slot. Furthermore, to ensure the quality of surveillance, some applications require k-coverage of the monitored area. In this paper, we first define the sensor energy-efficient scheduling for k-coverage (SESK) problem. We further resolve it by proposing a scheduling approach named distributed energy-efficient scheduling for k-coverage DESK such that the energy consumption among all the sensors is balanced while still assuring the k-coverage requirement. This approach is completely distributed as well as localized, which is more practical than centralized ones in wireless sensor networks