Energy-aware distributed algorithm for virtual backbone in wireless sensor networks

An important characteristic that distinguishes Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) from other distributed systems is their need for energy efficiency because sensors have finite energy reserve. Since there is no fixed infrastructure or centralized management in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), a Connected Dominating Set (CDS) has been proposed as a virtual backbone. The CDS plays a major role in routing, broadcasting, coverage and activity scheduling. To reduce the traffic during communication and prolong network lifetime, it is desirable to construct a Minimum CDS (MCDS). For the MCDS problem, this kind of the networks has been modeled in Unit Disk Graph (UDG), in which nodes have same transmission range. In this paper, a new energy-aware distributed algorithm for MCDS problem in UDG with constant approximation ratio and time complexity of O(n) and message complexity of O(n) is introduced. Theoretical analysis and simulation results are also presented to verify our approach's efficiency.