Energy-aware set-covering approaches for approximate data collection in wireless sensor networks

To conserve energy, sensor nodes with similar readings can be grouped such that readings from only the representative nodes within the groups need to be reported. However, efficiently identifying sensor groups and their representative nodes is a very challenging task. In this paper, we propose a centralized algorithm to determine a set of representative nodes with high energy levels and wide data coverage ranges. Here, the data coverage range of a sensor node is considered to be the set of sensor nodes that have reading behaviors very close to the particular sensor node. To further reduce the extra cost incurred in messages for selection of representative nodes, a distributed algorithm is developed. Furthermore, maintenance mechanisms are proposed to dynamically select alternative representative nodes when the original representative nodes run low on energy, or cannot capture spatial correlation within their respective data coverage ranges. Using experimental studies on both synthesis and real data sets, our proposed algorithms are shown to effectively and efficiently provide approximate data collection while prolonging the network lifetime.