Simultaneous placement and scheduling of sensors

We consider the problem of monitoring spatial phenomena, such as road speeds on a highway, using wireless sensors with limited battery life. A central question is to decide where to locate these sensors to best predict the phenomenon at the unsensed locations. However, given the power constraints, we also need to determine when to selectively activate these sensors in order to maximize the performance while satisfying lifetime requirements. Traditionally, these two problems of sensor placement and scheduling have been considered separately from each other; one first decides where to place the sensors, and then when to activate them. In this paper, we present an efficient algorithm, ESPASS, that simultaneously optimizes the placement and the schedule. We prove that ESPASS provides a constant-factor approximation to the optimal solution of this NP-hard optimization problem. A salient feature of our approach is that it obtains “balanced” schedules that perform uniformly well over t...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IPSN
• Authors: Andreas Krause, Ram Rajagopal, Anupam Gupta, Carlos Guestrin
• Keywords: IPSN 2009, Limited Battery Life, Sensor, Sensor Networks, Wireless Sensors