Random Scheduling for Wireless Sensor Networks

In energy constrained wireless sensor networks, node scheduling is an effective approach to improving the energy efficiency and prolonging the network lifetime. In this paper, we propose a distributed, lightweight, and location-unaware scheduling scheme for randomly deployed wireless sensor networks. The basic idea of the scheduling scheme is to organize sensor nodes into disjoint node sets, which work alternately to extend network lifetime effectively. This scheme neither incurs any communication overhead nor relies on expensive localization services. Also we have done thorough mathematical analysis and extensive simulations on the scheme using Poisson point process, a realistic deployment model in large scale randomly deployed sensor networks. Theoretic analysis reveals the internal relationship among the required coverage performance, expected network lifetime, node deployment intensity and failure probability. Impact of normally and uniformly distributed time asynchrony on network coverage quality is also investigated. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is resilient to time asynchrony among random sensor nodes.