An energy-efficient coverage maintenance scheme for distributed sensor networks

This paper presents Tri-State Channel Access scheme to augment energy efficiency for wireless sensor networks. All sensor nodes have three states; SLEEP, ROUTE, and REPORT. In our scheme, the SLEEP state nodes are selected by simple perimeter coverage with backoff algorithm, and the ROUTE or REPORT state nodes are categorized by the priority based backoff algorithm. The performance of our scheme is investigated via computer simulations and simulation results show that the proposed scheme ensures full area coverage after turning off some redundant nodes. In additions, our scheme can be easily applied to dependable sensor network emphasizing reliability and robustness.