An efficient algorithm to maximize the network lifetime for target coverage

A critical aspect of applications with wireless sensor networks is network lifetime. Therefore, judicious power management and scheduling can effectively extend operational time. One way to prolong the network lifetime is to divide the network into cover sets, where each cover set is capable of monitoring all targets. In this paper, we propose a novel and efficient algorithm which considers both residual energy and overlapping target to generate the maximum number of cover sets. Additionally, the algorithm can generate both disjoint and non-disjoint cover sets. Also, the proposed algorithm does not need information about targets which each sensor covers, or the sensors which a target is covered by them, in advance. Through simulation, we show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other similar algorithms in term of execution time, while it produces comparable results in term of number of generated cover sets.