Asynchronous Random Sleeping for Sensor Networks

Sleeping scheduling is a common energy-conservation solution for sensor networks. For application whereby coordination of sleeping among sensors is not possible or inconvenient, random sleeping is the only option. In this paper, the authors study the Asynchronous Random Sleeping(ARS) scheme whereby sensors do not need to synchronize with each other, and do not need to coordinate their sleeping schedules. The stationary coverage probability and the expected coverage periods for ARS are derived. For surveillance application, the derive in addition the detection probability and detection delay distribution. The correctness of their results is validated through extensive simulations. They compare ARS with other synchronous and asynchronous sleeping scheduling algorithms and show that ARS offers better performance in terms of detection delay in the lower duty-cycle regime.