Coverage Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks: Review and Future Directions

The coverage problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be generally defined as a measure of how effectively a network field is monitored by its sensor nodes. This problem has attracted a lot of interest over the years and as a result, many coverage protocols were proposed. In this survey, we first propose a taxonomy for classifying coverage protocols in WSNs. Then, we classify the coverage protocols into three categories (i.e. coverage aware deployment protocols, sleep scheduling protocols for flat networks, and cluster-based sleep scheduling protocols) based on the network stage where the coverage is optimized. For each category, relevant protocols are thoroughly reviewed and classified based on the adopted coverage techniques. Finally, we discuss open issues (and recommend future directions to resolve them) associated with the design of realistic coverage protocols. Issues such as realistic sensing models, realistic energy consumption models, realistic connectivity models and sensor localization are covered

3D Multi-Objective Deployment of an Industrial Wireless Sensor Network for Maritime Applications Utilizing a Distributed Parallel Algorithm

Effective monitoring marine environment has become a vital problem in the marine applications. Traditionally, marine application mostly utilizes oceanographic research vessel methods to monitor the environment and human parameters. But these methods are usually expensive and time-consuming, also limited resolution in time and space. Due to easy deployment and cost-effective, WSNs have recently been considered as a promising alternative for next generation IMGs. This paper focuses on solving the issue of 3D WSN deployment in a 3D engine room space of a very large crude-oil carrier (VLCC), in which many power devices are also considered. To address this 3D WSN deployment problem for maritime applications, a 3D uncertain coverage model is proposed with a new 3D sensing model and an uncertain fusion operator, is presented. The deployment problem is converted into a multi-objective problems (MOP) in which three objectives are simultaneously considered: Coverage, Lifetime and Reliability. Our aim is to achieve extensive Coverage, long Lifetime and high Reliability. We also propose a distributed parallel cooperative co-evolutionary multi-objective large-scale evolutionary algorithm (DPCCMOLSEA) for maritime applications. In the simulation experiments, the effectiveness of this algorithm is verified in comparing with five state-of-the-art algorithms. The numerical outputs demonstrate that the proposed method performs the best with respect to both optimization performance and computation time

Clustering objectives in wireless sensor networks: A survey and research direction analysis

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) typically include thousands of resource-constrained sensors to monitor their surroundings, collect data, and transfer it to remote servers for further processing. Although WSNs are considered highly flexible ad-hoc networks, network management has been a fundamental challenge in these types of net- works given the deployment size and the associated quality concerns such as resource management, scalability, and reliability. Topology management is considered a viable technique to address these concerns. Clustering is the most well-known topology management method in WSNs, grouping nodes to manage them and/or executing various tasks in a distributed manner, such as resource management. Although clustering techniques are mainly known to improve energy consumption, there are various quality-driven objectives that can be realized through clustering. In this paper, we review comprehensively existing WSN clustering techniques, their objectives and the network properties supported by those techniques. After refining more than 500 clustering techniques, we extract about 215 of them as the most important ones, which we further review, catergorize and classify based on clustering objectives and also the network properties such as mobility and heterogeneity. In addition, statistics are provided based on the chosen metrics, providing highly useful insights into the design of clustering techniques in WSNs.publishedVersio

Differential Evolution in Wireless Communications: A Review

Differential Evolution (DE) is an evolutionary computational method inspired by the biological processes of evolution and mutation. DE has been applied in numerous scientific fields. The paper presents a literature review of DE and its application in wireless communication. The detailed history, characteristics, strengths, variants and weaknesses of DE were presented. Seven broad areas were identified as different domains of application of DE in wireless communications. It was observed that coverage area maximisation and energy consumption minimisation are the two major areas where DE is applied. Others areas are quality of service, updating mechanism where candidate positions learn from a large diversified search region, security and related field applications. Problems in wireless communications are often modelled as multiobjective optimisation which can easily be tackled by the use of DE or hybrid of DE with other algorithms. Different research areas can be explored and DE will continue to be utilized in this contex

A Survey and Future Directions on Clustering: From WSNs to IoT and Modern Networking Paradigms

Many Internet of Things (IoT) networks are created as an overlay over traditional ad-hoc networks such as Zigbee. Moreover, IoT networks can resemble ad-hoc networks over networks that support device-to-device (D2D) communication, e.g., D2D-enabled cellular networks and WiFi-Direct. In these ad-hoc types of IoT networks, efficient topology management is a crucial requirement, and in particular in massive scale deployments. Traditionally, clustering has been recognized as a common approach for topology management in ad-hoc networks, e.g., in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Topology management in WSNs and ad-hoc IoT networks has many design commonalities as both need to transfer data to the destination hop by hop. Thus, WSN clustering techniques can presumably be applied for topology management in ad-hoc IoT networks. This requires a comprehensive study on WSN clustering techniques and investigating their applicability to ad-hoc IoT networks. In this article, we conduct a survey of this field based on the objectives for clustering, such as reducing energy consumption and load balancing, as well as the network properties relevant for efficient clustering in IoT, such as network heterogeneity and mobility. Beyond that, we investigate the advantages and challenges of clustering when IoT is integrated with modern computing and communication technologies such as Blockchain, Fog/Edge computing, and 5G. This survey provides useful insights into research on IoT clustering, allows broader understanding of its design challenges for IoT networks, and sheds light on its future applications in modern technologies integrated with IoT.acceptedVersio