Wireless Sensor Networks - A survey on maximizing lifetime in sensor coverage problems

Plenary speakerNational audienceA wireless sensor network (WSN) is constituted of spatially distributed autonomous sensors dedicated to monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, pressure, toxic gaz... The development of wireless sensor networks was motivated by military applications such as battlefield surveillance or by industrial applications, such as process monitoring in production industry, health monitoring, and for a large part, monitoring in hostile environment (e.g. highly polluted places). One of the key issues of a WSN is to maintain its activity over the largest possible time period, the lifetime. This survey concerns a very challenging category of problems where a set of targets should be monitored over time by the sensors (having a limited level of energy) that can be activated individually. The goal is to maximize the lifetime of the network by activating simultaneously subgroups of sensors covering the targets for a specific duration. Several variants of the original problem are explored and solved to optimality with a general framework based on column generation and metaheuristics. The presentation will be concluded by the rapid presentation of a WSN simulation software