CDS-based coverage control algorithm for buoys based sensor networks

Underwater acoustic sensor networks (UASN) based on the advances in underwater data collection and observing systems may play an important role in oceanographic research. UASN typically comprises of sensor nodes that are deployed in sufficiently large numbers for data collection, monitoring and surveillance, where sensor nodes are also energy limited without easy way to replenish power unfortunately. Due to severely limited energy constraints of nodes and poor transmission feature in the harsh oceanic environment, how to conserve energy while maintaining network coverage has been one of the most difficult problems. As one special kind of UASN, Buoys based sensor networks (BSN) proposed by ourselves comprises a mass of buoy-based vertical detection chains, which are regard as surface buoy nodes in one planar sea level. Compared with UASN, BSN can extend coverage distance and improve wireless transmission rate, therefore, it is one more promising method to perform oceanic three-dimensional exploration. This paper investigates the utility of a Connected Dominating Set (CDS) based coverage control algorithm for buoys based sensor networks. Traditional CDS-based algorithm maintains a connected virtual backbone of awaking nodes to enable necessary information delivery. Surface buoy nodes belonging to CDS virtual backbone remain awake until the next new round, whereas non-CDS buoy nodes go to low-powered sleep mode. However, how to maintain network coverage of BSN has not been considered. Surface buoy nodes are more sparsely deployed because of their much higher prices, therefore, wireless communication links are prone to break and regions of interest (ROI) are prone to blind monitoring since lack of accurate placement. This paper used CDS-based coverage control algorithm to decide buoys scheduling policy so as to guarantee network reliability and robustness.