Kuhn–Munkres Parallel Genetic Algorithm for the Set Cover Problem and Its Application to Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks

Operating mode scheduling is crucial for the lifetime of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, the growing scale of networks has made such a scheduling problem more challenging, as existing set cover and evolutionary algorithms become unable to provide satisfactory efficiency due to the curse of dimensionality. In this paper, a Kuhn–Munkres (KM) parallel genetic algorithm is developed to solve the set cover problem and is applied to the lifetime maximization of large-scale WSNs. The proposed algorithm schedules the sensors into a number of disjoint complete cover sets and activates them in batch for energy conservation. It uses a divide-and-conquer strategy of dimensionality reduction, and the polynomial KM algorithm a are hence adopted to splice the feasible solutions obtained in each subarea to enhance the search efficiency substantially. To further improve global efficiency, a redundant-trend sensor schedule strategy was developed. Additionally, we meliorate the evaluation function through penalizing incomplete cover sets, which speeds up convergence. Eight types of experiments are conducted on a distributed platform to test and inform the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The results show that it offers promising performance in terms of the convergence rate, solution quality, and success rate.