Topology-aware placement and role assignment for energy-efficient information gathering in sensor networks

Consider a network of energy-constrained wireless nodes, capable of sensing and communication, to be deployed over an area to be monitored. There is a set of points or regions of interest in that area, each of which must be sensed (covered) by at least one node. The nodes are allowed to perform in-network data aggregation. As a node may or may not cover one or more points/regions of interest, we allow nodes to assume two roles sensor (nodes that sense their vicinity and generate data packets) and relay (nodes that only aggregate and transmit data packets). We consider the problem of placing nodes in the monitoring area and assigning roles to them such that the system lifetime is maximized, while ensuring that each point/region of interest is covered by at least one sensor node. This is the maximum lifetime sensor deployment problem with coverage constraints. The paper presents a novel algorithm to solve this problem and provides experimental results to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.