Role Assignment in Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Vertex Coloring

This work proposes a heuristic approach for the role assignment problem in wireless sensor networks based on the classical problem of vertex coloring in graph theory. Functions or roles define activities to be performed by sensor nodes. In the literature, there are several algorithms for the role assignment in sensor networks and in this work we present a different strategy based on the vertex coloring problem. There is a strong relationship between them, allowing us to use the vertex coloring as the start point in the solution of the role assignment problem. Such approach leads to good solutions when we consider various simultaneous events, differently from other proposals that do not consider this scenario. Even in the case of a high number of events, our algorithm remains efficient, maintaining the network connectivity, keeping the rate of non-sensed events and preserving the low energy consumption. The proposed solution tries to save the most important sensors in the network, with respect to their roles, increasing their lifetime.