A Distributed Greedy Algorithm for Connected Sensor Cover in Dense Sensor Networks

Achieving optimal battery usage and prolonged network lifetime are two of the most fundamental issues in wireless sensor networks. By exploiting node and data redundancy in dense networks, and by scheduling nodes efficiently, minimum battery drainage is possible. In this paper, we focus on the problem of Minimum Connected Sensor Cover (MCSC), an NP-hard problem, and describe a distributed greedy algorithm to generate sub-optimal connected sensor covers for homogeneous dense static sensor networks. Our greedy algorithm is based on the notions of maximal independent sets on random geometric graphs, and on the structure of Voronoi diagram. We provide complexity analysis and bounds on the cardinalities of maximal independent sets (MIS) for our problem scenario, and derive an analytical expression for the size of the sub-optimal minimum connected sensor cover. We verify the bounds on the MIS using simulation.