Maximising network lifetime for target coverage problem in wireless sensor networks

Target coverage problem is one of the important problems in wireless sensor network in which each target should be covered by at least one sensor. All the sensors are organised into different groups called sensor cover in such a way that each cover can monitor all the targets for a fixed duration. By keeping one sensor cover active at a time while others in sleep mode, sensors batteries can be utilised in efficient way. This helps in prolonging the network lifetime. In this study, the authors propose a new energy‐efficient heuristic to schedule the sensors in different non‐disjoint sensor covers which helps to maximise network lifetime. At first, the authors’ heuristic identify all the critical targets (least covered) and the critical sensors (covering critical targets). The critical targets , covered by minimum number of sensors, will be the targets that become uncovered first. Utilising critical sensors efficiently will help to increase the network lifetime. In their method, they try to select minimum number of critical sensors in each sensor cover so that the critical targets can be covered for longer period. Simulation results shows that the proposed heuristic outperforms many existing approaches for solving target coverage problem.