Proficient QoS-Based Target Coverage Problem in Wireless Sensor Networks

Assuring the coverage towards the predefined set of targets, power-constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of sensing devices (i.e., sensor nodes) that are associated with limited battery life and fixed sensing range. All the sensors are collectively responsible for covering these sets of objects. The standard target coverage problem is the one where continuous coverage is provided over a predefined set of targets for the maximum possible duration so that the scarce resource (battery power) can be optimally utilized. Therefore, in order to incorporate quality of service (QoS) in the network and ensure smooth monitoring of the desired target set, the paper addresses target Q-Coverage, which is one of the variants of standard target coverage problem where a target is covered by at least Q-sensors (pre-defined number) in every cover set. A cover set is a subset of sensors which cover whole targets in a single iteration. In this paper, a greedy heuristic based technique, i.e., maximum coverage small lifetime (MCSL) has been proposed, which restricts the usages of those sensors that poorly cover targets and promotes the usage of those sensors that have maximum coverage and energy. Simulations are performed on static wireless sensor network with varying Q values to test the efficiency of the proposed method. The performance of the proposed heuristic is compared with optimal upper bound based on network lifetime, and results prove that performance is improvised by 94%. The obtained results are further compared with the existing approaches to prove the superiority of the proposed work via extensive experimentations.