Efficient Hexagonal 2-coverage by Mobile Sensor Nodes

Santoshi Ganala, R.J.D Souza, Johny Jose

Department of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, Surathkal, P.O.Srinivas Nagar 575 025, Karnataka, India.
1

ganala.santoshi@gmail.com 2 rjd@nitk.ac.in 3 johnysdb@gmail.com

Abstract: In Mobile Sensor Networks, the degree of coverage addresses how well a given area can be monitored or tracked by sensors. In a 2-covered network, each point in the area is covered by two sensors. Different applications require different degrees of coverage, depending on the Quality of Service (QoS) it requires. A wireless sensor network covers the Region of Interest (ROI) with static nodes, while a mobile sensor network covers the same with mobile nodes. In this paper, an algorithm for the traversal of mobile nodes, so as to 2-cover the ROI is proposed. The algorithm requires four mobile sensor nodes. The total distance travelled by the nodes is computed and compared with other similar algorithms. Keywords: coverage, mobile traversal algorithm, hexagonal coverage, mobile sensor network.

Previous work on mobile traversal has been done using triangulation based coverage [3] and Hexagonal coverage [4]. The triangulation based coverage is not energy efficient, as the total distance travelled by the nodes is not optimized. Besides, it offers only single coverage. Purohit et al [4] splits a rectangular ROI into regular hexagons, allowing holes between the hexagonal areas. The scanning procedure is not free of coverage-holes. We propose a method of dividing the ROI into regular hexagons in each row. Consecutive rows are separated by a distance of a/2. Sensor nodes are scheduled to traverse along the vertices of the hexagon, so that the entire ROI can be 2-covered without coverage-holes. This paper is organized as follows. The problem is formulated in section 2. In section 3, the Mobile Traversal Algorithm is developed and total distance travelled is calculated. Section 4 evaluates the findings against similar previous work. Section 5 concludes the paper. II. PROBLEM FORMULATION Most of the sensing applications require tracking of the entire ROI. Hence an algorithm to cover a given ROI should be robust enough to withstand possible node failure. To achieve this, we provide 2-coverage of every point in the ROI. One of the reasons for node failure is energy depletion of nodes. The energy loss of nodes is proportional to the distance it travels. Hence minimizing the distance traveled is another requirement. When a group of nodes coordinate together to scan an ROI, failure of a single node can deteriorate the performance. Hence there is a need to ensure that the total distance travelled is equally shared by all the nodes. Khan et al [3] showed that with three MSNs the entire ROI can be single covered. For this they divided the ROI into equilateral triangles. The drawback with this approach is that the entire area is only single covered. Hence it is not resilient to possible failures of a single node. Besides, the total

I. INTRODUCTION Sensor networks are the key for gathering information needed by smart environments, whether in buildings, utilities, industries, homes, ship boards, transportation systems, automations, etc. Counter measure for the recent terrorist and guerilla warfare necessitates distributed networks of sensors that can be deployed using aircraft, and have self organizing capabilities. A sensor network requires more number of nodes than an ad hoc network. Sensor nodes are devices with limited power, communication, computation and memory capacity. For sensor networks the power conservation may be the most important design criteria [1]. Mobile sensor networks (MSNs), as a new paradigm of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), emerged recently. They inherit all the properties such as the resource constraint and the infrastructureless nature from WSNs. They are also featured with node mobility. This feature allows the sensors to act in an intelligent way and makes MSNs more flexible and adaptive to unknown/hazardous environment, compared to their static counterpart. An increasing number of research activities on sensor coverage are currently being carried out on MSNs. One of the fundamental and challenging issues is coverage improvement [2].

distance travelled by all the nodes is not optimum. This shortens the network life time. Purohit et al [4] divided the ROI into regular hexagons and used four nodes. Each regular hexagon is split into two isosceles triangles and a rectangle. All the four MSNs are turned into active state to cover the rectangular area. Only three out of the four nodes are made active, to cover the triangular area. In order to provide fault tolerance, the authors have provided four additional nodes. They are placed at the four corners of the ROI. With this approach, the total distance travelled is less than that in [3]. It provides 2-coverage for the ROI; but there are coverage-holes. In addition to the presence of holes, the algorithm does not balance the distance travelled by the nodes. Hence some nodes may die early. Another drawback is that the total number of nodes used is more than that in other approaches. It is proposed to overcome these drawbacks and provide an optimized 2-coverage. The objectives of this study are i. ii. iii. To ensure that the every point in the ROI is covered by at least 2 sensors without any coverage holes. To ensure that the total distance travelled by the nodes is minimum. To ensure that all the nodes travel approximately equal distance, so that their energy depletion is uniform.

Consider a rectangular ROI of length l and breadth b. The ROI is split into regular hexagons as shown in Fig.3.1.1. Horizontally the hexagons are numbered from 1 to m and vertically they are numbered from 1 to n. Each hexagon is vertically split so that it becomes two trapeziums. Thus a horizontal row contains 2m number of trapeziums. The ROI consists of n such lines. Apart from regular hexagons, the ROI also includes m number of isosceles triangles at the top and bottom rows, as shown in Fig. 3.1.1 There are m number of regular hexagons arranged along the length l and n number of regular hexagons arranged along the breadth b. They share the common edges. Each edge of the hexagon is of length a. The following mathematical relations can be established to find out the values of m and n. l b = = a m3 a (5n-1)/2 . (1) ..(2)

When four nodes are placed at the four vertices of the trapezium, they provide 2-coverage for the trapezium, as shown in Fig.3.1.2

III. MOBILE TRAVERSAL ALGORITHM (MTA) We develop an algorithm for the nodes to travel along the vertices of the hexagon, so that the above objectives are achieved. 3.1) Partitioning of the ROI
Figure 3.1.2 Two coverage of Trapezium with four nodes

In addition, the nodes at the lower part of the trapezium are able to cover an additional equilateral triangle, with side a, as shown in Fig. 3.1.3. Similarly, the two nodes at the upper part of the trapezium also cover an additional area.

Figure 3.1.1 Segmentation of ROI into regular Hexagons Figure 3.1.3 Additional 2-coverage of equilateral triangles

After traversing one row of trapeziums, the nodes move downward to traverse along another row of hexagons. In order to take advantage of the availability of the additional triangular area, the nodes at the upper end are moved down a distance of 3a and 2a and the nodes at the lower end are moved a distance of 2a and 3a. This is shown in the Fig. 3.1.4

3.3) Calculation of the total distance travelled To traverse one row, the nodes at the vertices of vertically bigger edge of the trapezium travel a distance of (23am - 23a) and the nodes at vertices of vertically smaller edge of the trapezium travel a distance of 23am. On reaching the end of an odd numbered row, to jump to the next row, the nodes 2 and 3 of the trapezium travel a distance of 3a and the nodes 1 and 4 the trapezium travel a distance 2a. On reaching the end of an even numbered row, the distances jumped by the nodes are interchanged. Thus, to travel one row, total distance travelled by the four nodes = (23am - 23a)+ 23am = 43am - 23a. Total distance travelled by the four nodes, to move to the next row = 10a. Hence, total distance travelled, to cover the ROI is d= n(43am - 23a)+ 10a(n-1) (3) Equation (3) can be written as d = nk1 + (n-1)k2 Where k1 = 43am - 23a and k2 = 10a d nk1 + nk2 n (k1 + k2) n (k3) where k3 = k1 + k2 n = (2b+a)/5a using equation(2) d ((2b+a)/5a) k3 on simplifying it can be shown that d = K / a, where K is a constant. Therefore the total distance travelled d varies inversely as side of the regular hexagon a increases. IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Results of computation of this algorithm are compared with of Purohit et al [4]. The same ROI of 4500 x 2000 units is taken and the side of the hexagon is varied from 45 to 65, at an increment of 5 units of length. The results are tabulated in the Table 1. It is seen that for each value of the hexagon side, our algorithm has an improved performance. This improvement is shown in Fig. 4.1. It is seen that as the side of the hexagon increases, the total distance travelled decreases.

Figure 3.1.4 The downward movement of nodes by 2a and 3a distances

With this partitioning, when the four MSNs are at the four vertices of a trapezium, each point in that trapezium is covered by at least two sensors. Additionally, each pair of nodes at the upper part and lower part covers an equilateral triangle area. 3.2) The mobility pattern of sensor nodes

Each hexagon is divided into two trapeziums as shown in figure below.

1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

Initially four nodes are placed to form a trapezium. This 2-covers the trapezium. It also 2-covers the two equilateral triangles (blue colour) at the top and bottom, as shown in the figure. Move two nodes in direction of traversal, to the next trapezium. This 2-covers the next trapezium and two more equilateral triangles. Continue step 2 until entire row is covered. Move all the four nodes downward, to the next row. This is achieved by moving the upper nodes by a distance of 3a and 2a as well as lower nodes by 2a and 3a. Repeat step 3 and 4 until entire ROI is covered.

Figure 4.1 Comparison of results

REFERENCES
TABLE I COMPARISON OF TOTAL DISTANCE TRAVELLED. [1] I.F Akyildiz, W. Su, Y. Sankarasubramaniam and E. Cayircie; A survey of sensor networks, IEEE Communications magazine,.vol 40, No. 8, p 102-116, 2002. Xu. Li and Ni. Santoro, An Integrated Self-Deployment and Coverage Maintenance Scheme for Mobile Sensor Networks, In Proc of 2nd Int. Conf. on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensors Networks (MSN06), Vol. 4325, p 847-860. A.Khan, C.Qiao and S.K.Tripathi, Mobile Traversal Schemes based on Triangulation Coverage, Mobile Network Applications vol. 12, pp.422- 437, 2007. G.N. Purohit, S.Verma and M.Sharma, Hexagonal Coverage by Mobile Sensor Nodes, International Journal of Computer and Network Security (IJCNS), vol. 2, No. 4, April 2010. N.A.A Aziz, K. A. Aziz, and W. Z. W .Ismail, Coverage Strategies for Wireless Sensor Networks, Conference proceedings of World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology , ( WCSET 2009), Penang, Malaysia, February 25-27 H. Zhang and J. C. Hou, Maintaining sensing coverage and connectivity in large sensor networks, Ad Hoc & Sensor Wireless Networks, Vol. 1, p. 89 124, March 3 2005. A Ghosh and S.K. Das, Coverage and Connectivity Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks, Pervasive and Mobile Computing, vol.4, p. 303-334,2008. X. Bai, S.Kumar, D.Xuan, Z. Yun, T.H. Lai, Deploying wireless sensors to achieve both coverage and connectivity, In ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing,p131142,2006.

Side of Regular Hexagon (a) 45 50 55 60 65

Hexagonal Coverage (Purohit et al) 690677.78 624499.33 569478.6 536880.36 465344.62

Improved Hexagonal 2-Coverage (present study) 328844.10 311055.50 274842.10 256890.20 238872.80

% of improvem ent 52.17 50.15 50.97 51.39 48.63

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V. CONCLUSION Most of the traversal algorithms in MSNs fail to completely 2-cover the ROI, with an optimum traversal distance. This work attempts to improve the 2-coverage in MSNs. ROI is divided into regular hexagons and designed an algorithm for the traversal of the nodes, so as to minimize the total distance travelled. It is seen that this algorithm provides 2-coverage for the entire ROI and also the total distance travelled is less than that in earlier approaches. There is a saving of over 50% in the total distance travelled.

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