Scheduling nodes in wireless sensor networks: a Voronoi approach

A wireless sensor network is a special kind of ad-hoc network with distributed sensing and processing capability that can be used in a wide range of applications, such as environmental monitoring, industrial applications and precision agriculture. Despite their potential applications, such networks have particular features imposed by resource restrictions, such as low computational power, reduced bandwidth and specially limited power source. In case of a network with a high density of sensor nodes, some problems may arise such as the intersection of sensing area, redundant data, communication interference, and energy waste. A management application is necessary to make the most of network resources. On the other hand, a high-density network can introduce a fault-tolerant mechanism, increase precision, and provide multi-resolution data. The network density control depends on the application. In this paper, we propose a method to set up which nodes should be turned off or on. The management may take the sensor node out of service temporally. Our design uses a Voronoi diagram, which decomposes the space into regions around each node. That schema could be used in management architecture for a wireless sensor network.