Radius reconfiguration for energy conservation in sensor networks

The sensing range of a sensor node significantly affects its energy consumption. This study focuses on allowing each sensor to dynamically adjust its sensing radius so that the global coverage of the whole detecting area remains unchanged, while minimising the sensing range of each sensor locally. The proposed solution minimises energy consumption and extends the lifetime of the sensor network while adjusting the sensing radius of each sensor node. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method can reduce the sensing radii of 90% of sensor nodes when sensors are randomly deployed with enough sensors to cover a designated area [i.e. density of 5 sensors/sensing radius (Shih et al., 2001)], and can reduce the sensing radii of 40% of the nodes to 0 (i.e. a sleep mode) when sensors are densely deployed.