An efficient distributed algorithm for target-coverage preservation in wireless sensor networks

Maximizing the full coverage lifetime over a predefined set of target points (TPs) is one of the most fundamental functions in wireless sensor networks. However, coverage performance is challenging to maintain due to the energy consumption of self-contained sensor nodes (SNs). Therefore, in this paper, we propose an energy-efficient distributed algorithm for target-coverage preservation (DATCP) that can rotate a group of SNs for the monitoring task in each time slot based on cover sets and the remaining energy to ensure preservation of coverage. Specifically, we first propose a novel SN clustering algorithm based on the location of the TPs to reduce the number of control messages. Next, we introduce a cover set construction algorithm to group SNs that can cover all TPs in a cluster. In addition, our approach considers the capability of multihop communication to improve the energy efficiency in the network. The results of extensive experiments show that substantial improvements in full coverage lifetime and energy efficiency compared to existing algorithms are obtained by our proposed algorithm: the full coverage lifetime can be enhanced more than 30 % compared to that of other approaches.