A novel gossip-based sensing coverage algorithm for dense wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely studied and usefully employed in many applications such as monitoring environments and embedded systems. WSNs consist of many nodes spread randomly over a wide area; therefore, the sensing regions of different nodes may overlap partially. This is called the "sensing coverage problem". In this paper, we define a maximum sensing coverage region (MSCR) problem and present a novel gossip-based sensing-coverage-aware algorithm to solve the problem. In the algorithm, sensor nodes gossip with their neighbors about their sensing coverage region. In this way, nodes decide locally to forward packets (as an active node) or to disregard packets (as a sleeping or redundant node). Being sensing-coverage-aware, the redundant node can cut back on its activities whenever its sensing region is k-covered by enough neighbors. With the distributed and low-overhead traffic benefits of gossip, we spread energy consumption to different sensor nodes, achieve maximum sensing coverage with minimal energy consumption in each individual sensor node, and prolong the whole network lifetime. We apply our algorithm to improve LEACH, a clustering routing protocol for WSNs, and develop a simulation to evaluate the performance of the algorithm.