Grid architecture for lightweight WSN-based area monitoring and alerts dissemination

Wireless Sensor Networks have been used for many applications especially for sites monitoring and surveillance. This contribution proposes a new grid-based architecture to monitor an area of interest that could be of a large size through a number of energy efficient sensors deployed randomly to cover the whole area. The proposed solution relays on a grid-based scheme where the monitored area is logically divided into small rectangular cells and in each cell at least one sensor is deployed. The status of the sensors located within a certain cell tells the situation in that cell either in hazard state or not, as well as the situation of other cells around. When a hazard is detected, all the deployed sensors enter into a dynamic cooperation to ensure an energy-efficient dissemination of the whole area with an alert about the new hazard. The proposed solution has been validated through intensive simulations which show an important improvement in terms of overall network overhead as well as overall network energy consumption.