Network Lifetime and Coverage Fraction Analysis for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In Wireless Sensor Networks, two crucial parameters are lifetime of the network and optimal coverage for sensed region. This paper addresses the issues and challenges pertaining to these parameters for further investigation, and provides a method to approximate the energy utilization and optimal coverage inside the bottleneck zone for wireless sensor networks. The proposed analytical framework calculates correctly the network lifetime upper bound of wireless sensor networks. The derivation of the network lifetime upper bound is carried out using (i) network coding and (ii) network coding with duty cycle. Based on that, an approximate derivation is made and the corresponding results are obtained from the simulation study.  The comparison of the results of the previous study and those obtained in this paper reveals that the actual network lifetime upper bound is lower in the present case. This is due to the assumption made by authors of previous work, on coder nodes’ presence throughout the bottleneck zone instead of only one hop distance away from the sink. In addition, the effect of coverage fraction in case of node failure, on network lifetime upper bound is derived for the previously reported and present model. The simulated results obtained from new derivation show that the coverage fraction is lesser than that obtained by previous model.