A Distributed Self-Healing Approach for Virtual Backbone Construction and Maintenance in Wireless Sensor Networks

Future Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) will be composed of a large number of densely deployed sensors. Distributed techniques with fault-tolerance and energy awareness are expected in WSNs. Computing Connected Dominating Sets (CDSs) have been widely used for virtual backbone construction in WSNs to control topology, facilitate routing and extend network lifetime. This paper proposes a new distributed algorithm for CDS construction in WSNs. The algorithm is intended to construct a CDS with the smallest ratio when compared to its centralized version. Moreover, this paper proposes a localized algorithm that efficiently maintains the backbone when some backbone nodes decide to enter the energy saving sleep mode. We attempt to prolong the lifetime of the constructed CDS by allowing nodes with higher residual energy to have more chances to be part of the constructed and maintained backbone. Simulation shows that our distributed approach has a maximum ratio of 1.5 to the centralized approach and it satisfies all of the geometrical properties of its canalized version. Based on this ratio, this distributed algorithm has an approximation factor of 7.5 to the optimal CDS. To the best of our knowledge, this approximation outperforms the existing distributed CDS construction algorithms.