Energy efficient coverage control in wireless sensor networks based on multi-objective genetic algorithm

Due to the constrained energy and computational resources available to sensor nodes, the number of nodes deployed to cover the whole monitored area completely is often higher than if a deterministic procedure were used. Activating only the necessary number of sensor nodes at any particular moment is an efficient way to save the overall energy of the system. A novel coverage control scheme based on multi-objective genetic algorithm is proposed in this paper. The minimum number of sensors is selected in a densely deployed environment while preserving full coverage. As opposed to the binary detection sensor model in the previous work, a more precise detection model is applied in combination with the coverage control scheme. Simulation results show that our algorithm can achieve balanced performance on different types of detection sensor models while maintaining high coverage rate. With the same number of deployed sensors, our scheme compares favorably with the existing schemes.