An energy-conserving algorithm for the collection and reporting of data in mobile sensor networks

Advances in mobile and sensor technologies have enabled the collection of continuously changing data such as locations and weather measurements. However, conserving the energy of these devices has been a major challenge. In this work, we propose an energy-efficient solution to a new variant of the Discrete Unit Disk Covering Problem (DUDC), which models a mobile sensor network. We present an approximation algorithm for this problem and theoretical analysis in the case of randomly positioned sensors that shows that three objectives are met: reduce the average number of active sensors that report measurements, spread the measurement burden over time evenly among the reporting sensors and maintain an acceptable quality of the reported measurements. Experimental and theoretical results show that our proposed algorithm has computational complexity and approximation factor comparable to currently known deterministic algorithms while meeting the aforementioned objectives.