Relay Placement for Higher Order Connectivity in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Sensors typically use wireless transmitters to communicate with each other. However, sensors may be located in a way that they cannot even form a connected network (e.g, due to failures of some sensors, or loss of battery power). In this paper we consider the problem of adding the smallest number of additional (relay) nodes so that the induced communication graph is 2-connected. The problem is NP -hard. In this paper we develop O(1)-approximation algorithms that find close to optimal solutions in time O((kn)) for achieving k-edge connectivity of n nodes. The worst case approximation guarantee is 10, but the algorithm produces solutions that are far better than this bound suggests. We also consider extensions to higher dimensions, and the scheme that we develop for points in the plane, yields a bound of 2dMST where dMST is the maximum degree of a minimum-degree Minimum Spanning Tree in d dimensions using Euclidean metrics. In addition, our methods extend with the same approximation guarantees to a generalization when the locations of relays are required to avoid certain polygonal regions (obstacles). We also prove that if the sensors are uniformly and identically distributed in a unit square, the expected number of relay nodes required goes to zero as the number of sensors goes to infinity.