Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660

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Ad Hoc Networks
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/adhoc

Energy-efficient coverage optimization in wireless sensor networks based

on Voronoi-Glowworm Swarm Optimization-K-means algorithm
Aparajita Chowdhury a, b, Debashis De b, c, *
a
Department of Information Technology, Techno Main Salt Lake, Kolkata-700091, West Bengal, India
b
Centre of Mobile cloud computing, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, West Bengal, Kolkata
-700064, West Bengal, India
c
University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Deployment of sensor nodes is one of the crucial factors in mobile wireless sensor networks for improving the
Coverage maximization performance of the network. The network’s lifetime primarily depends on the consumed energy and area
Lifetime enhancement coverage by the sensor nodes. The efficiency of mobile wireless sensor networks increases by the efficient
Glowworm swarm optimization
deployment of the sensors. Coverage and energy consumption mainly depends on the effective deployment
Voronoi diagram
K-Means algorithm
schemes of sensors. This article presents an energy-efficient coverage optimization technique with the help of the
Voronoi-Glowworm Swarm Optimization-K-means algorithm. In this approach, Glowworm Swarm Optimization,
K-means algorithm, and Voronoi cell structure enhance the coverage area with a minimum number of active
nodes. This approach considers optimum sensing radius calculation for efficient sensor deployment. Further­
more, the proposed method improves the lifetime of the deployed network by decreasing the consumed energy
by the deployed sensor nodes using multi-hop transmission and the sleep-wake mechanism. The simulation result
shows that area coverage is achieved by the proposed method up to 99.99% with the optimum number of active
sensor nodes.

1. Introduction
A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a group of low-powered tiny
sensor nodes intended for monitoring and recording environmental
conditions at different locations. The two most important issues of
wireless sensor networks are achieving maximum coverage and
enhancing the network lifetime. Maximizing the coverage area indicates
that the deployed sensor nodes monitor the maximum area of the region
of interest. So sensor deployment is a fundamental aspect of WSNs as
their performance is highly affected by it. Sensor deployment influences
different performance metrics of WSNs, such as area coverage, network
connectivity, and the total lifespan of the network. Network perfor­
mance is directly affected by the coverage of the sensor field as coverage
rate decides the monitoring capability of the sensing region; thus, it is
considered the measure of the quality of service in WSN. Area coverage
affects the nature of monitoring of the sensing region. The main objec­
tive of the area coverage is to magnify the detection rate of the sensing
region. Sensor rearrangement would be a practical approach to achieve
maximum area coverage. Sensors can be deployed randomly in the
sensing region since it is easy and less expensive, but this approach may
cause coverage holes in the sensing field. After initial deployment, a
reasonable rearrangement of the mobile sensors can increase the
network coverage and eradicate coverage hole issues. The network’s
lifetime is the amount of time the network sensors are alive to give full
coverage. WSN suffers from several substantial constraints such as
limited and non-rechargeable battery power, inadequate memory, and
limited computational capacity; enhancing the network’s lifetime is
crucial as the sensor nodes are generally limited battery-powered. Once
the battery gets exhausted, it becomes useless because many sensor
nodes are generally scattered in some remote areas, such as in some
dense forests, in any war field, underwater or underground. It is chal­
lenging and sometimes impossible to go there and change the battery of
the sensor nodes. So it is very much essential to enhance the lifetime by
maximizing the coverage area of the deployed sensor nodes in Mobile
wireless sensor networks.
Researchers have adopted many bio-inspired metaheuristic swarm
intelligence algorithms in recent days to improve the performance of the
wireless sensor networks, which includes increasing coverage area,

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dr.debashis.de@gmail.com (D. De).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2021.102660
Received 28 February 2021; Received in revised form 16 July 2021; Accepted 24 August 2021
Available online 26 August 2021
1570-8705/© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A. Chowdhury and D. De
network’s lifespan, routing mechanisms, and distribution of the sensor
nodes, etc. These metaheuristic algorithms are very efficient in
addressing different optimization problems, especially in the wireless
sensor network field. This article adopts the Glowworm Swarm Opti­
mization (GSO) technique [1] for increasing coverage area as well as the
network’s lifetime by analyzing the similarities of the behavior of a
glowworm and a mobile sensor node. GSO can compute multiple local
optima of multimodal functions, whereas other swarm intelligent tech­
niques can identify global optima. This algorithm is helpful to apply in
limited sensing range and also continuous domain. The implementation
of GSO is much simpler than other metaheuristic algorithms as it only
communicates with a finite number of neighbors. Each mobile sensor
node considers as a glowworm [1-7]; the residual energy of each sensor
node treats as the luciferin of a glowworm which reduces due to distance
traversal and data transmission. Again, due to random sensor deploy­
ment in the region of interest (ROI), there would be a high possibility of
area redundancy. In this article, we apply the GSO algorithm for
converging the mobile sensor nodes at the center of a Voronoi cell to
reduce the redundant area of the sensor networks. After the initial
deployment of the mobile sensor nodes, rearrangement of those sensors
may improve the coverage of the mobile wireless sensor networks
(MWSNs) and remove the coverage holes in the region of interest.
Substantial research has been overseeded in MWSNs to develop efficient
deployment schemes for enhancing network coverage. Some of these
schemes consider the mobility cost of all nodes besides improving the
coverage. In contrast, other schemes consider the adaptation of sensing
range to recover the depleted energy for sensing and upgrade the
coverage. Several methodologies have been adopted in [8–12] for
improving the coverage area of the sensing region of MWSNs.
K-means clustering algorithm [15] is suitable for clustering a vast
amount of data. Also, the time complexity of the k-means algorithm is
relatively less than the other clustering algorithms. The cluster centroids
determined by the K-means algorithm consider as optimum positions.
The k-means clustering algorithm guarantees convergence, and it can
generalize to different shapes and sizes of clusters. Moreover, this al­
gorithm is comparatively simple to implement.
The researchers have adopted several methodologies for sensor
deployment in the sensing region of the wireless sensor nodes. Voronoi
diagram is one of the famous computational geometrical structures used
in sensor deployment problems [17-19, 21]. Authors in [17] used the
Voronoi structure for hybrid nodes for minimizing coverage hole issues.
The authors have proposed BCBS and BCDS: 2 schemes in [18] to heal
the coverage holes efficiently with the help of the Voronoi blind-zone
polygon. The researchers have adopted a centralized Immune-Voronoi
deployment algorithm in [19] for maximizing coverage of the sensing
region of MWSNs based on binary and probabilistic models. The Voronoi
structure is also used here for better coverage optimization. In [21], the
authors successfully proposed three deployment algorithms VEC, VOR,
and Minimax, based on the Voronoi diagram.
Researchers applied Different bio-inspired swarm intelligence algo­
rithms like Cuckoo search and Chaotic Flower Pollination optimization
algorithm [24] to maximize wireless sensor networks’ coverage area.
Furthermore, the authors adopted the reverse glowworm swarm opti­
mization (RGSO) technique [26, 27] to optimize energy consumption by
the mobile sensor nodes and maximize the coverage area of the mobile
wireless sensor networks. Besides these, other bio-inspired algorithms
such as genetic algorithm [28, 32], firefly algorithm [30], and gray wolf
optimization algorithm [31] endorsed by the researchers in recent years
to enhance the performance of the wireless sensor networks. It includes
increasing coverage, the network’s lifetime, routing mechanisms, and
distribution of the sensor nodes.
This article applies Glowworm Swarm Optimization (GSO) algorithm
in mobile sensors with the amalgamation of Voronoi cell structure and
K-means algorithm. The proposed novel technique will simultaneously
maximize the coverage area and enhance the lifetime of the deployed
mobile sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks by minimizing energy
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Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660
depletion by converging the mobile nodes at the center of the Voronoi
cell. In the proposed mechanism, Glowworm Swarm Optimization
(GSO) algorithm, K-means algorithm, and Voronoi cell structure are
used for a better trade-off between the coverage area and the energy
consumption in the field of wireless sensor networks. As a result, the
deployed sensor’s lifetime enhances by minimizing the energy con­
sumption of the deployed sensor nodes. Furthermore, we apply multi-
hop transmission and sleep-wake mechanisms to reduce the energy
consumption by the deployed sensor nodes. Thus, in this article, we try
to intend better coverage and enhancement of the lifetime of the mobile
wireless sensor networks.
This study has the following contributions.
• It divides the entire sensing region into several clusters and de­
termines the cluster centers by applying the K-means algorithm.
• It provides almost complete coverage in the Region of Interest (ROI)
with the optimum number of active sensor nodes using Voronoi cell
structure.
• It enhances the network’s lifetime by reducing the consumed energy
of mobile wireless sensor nodes with the help of Multi-hop trans­
mission and sleep-wake mechanisms.
• This study finds the optimal positions of wireless sensor nodes in a
randomly deployed dynamic network by applying Glowworm Swarm
Optimization (GSO) algorithm for efficient sensor movement.
Several experiments are performed and compared with some other
exiting approaches to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed
mechanism. The performance of the proposed approach is analyzed
based on several experiments.
1.1. Article organization
The remaining part of the paper is structured as follows. A concise
interpretation of several studies on WSNs for maximizing area coverage
and reducing energy consumption is given in Section 2. The proposed
model is discussed in detail in Section 3. It describes the definition of the
problem, the mathematical model of the system, assumptions of the
model, and the mechanism of the proposed model. The algorithms are
also discussed in this section. Section 4 discusses the simulation analysis
and results of the proposed system. The performance of the system is
being evaluated in Section 5. Section 5 also presents the comparison
between the proposed mechanism and other existing algorithms through
rigorous simulation results. Open research problems and future scopes in
the related field are discussed in Section 6. Finally, Section 7 concludes
the article.
2. Related work
Numerous strategies were proposed in the literature for WSN
coverage optimization. Many bio-inspired swarm intelligence [1-8]
mechanisms are adopted in various application areas of wireless sensor
networks to enhance the network’s efficiency. According to the basic
Glowworm Swarm optimization (GSO) algorithm [1] proposed by
Krishnanand and Ghose, the glowworm is selected for the movement
based on the higher value of luciferin than itself. It collects all local
information about luciferin from the neighboring glowworm to make
decisions for movement. Various methodologies were recommended by
several researchers for enhancing the performance of the basic GSO al­
gorithm. The authors proposed a new methodology for initial sensor
deployment using a chaos tent map and introduced a new mechanism
for sensor movement in [2] to find the sensors’ updated positions. The
authors proposed a better sensor node movement mechanism depending
on global information for adaptive steps [3]. The GSO algorithm has
been adopted for sensor distribution in the search space [4], and in [5],
the authors used the GSO-based localization algorithm in a multidi­
mensional space. The authors used the GSO mechanism in the clustering
A. Chowdhury and D. De Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660

Algorithm 1
K-means algorithm.
Input
P = {p1, p2,...…, pn} //set of n sensors.
k // Number of desired clusters
V = {v1, v2,……., vk} be the set of centroids.
Output
A set of k clusters.
Steps:
1 A set of k sensors are arbitrarily chosen from P as initial centroids.
2 Calculate the distance between each sensor node and cluster centroids.
3 Assign the sensor to the cluster centroid having a minimum distance from all cluster
centers.
4 Recalculate the new cluster centroids using the below-mentioned equation:
∑i
vi = (1 /pi ) pj=1 xi ,where, ‘pi’ represents the number of sensors in the ith cluster.
1 Recalculate the distance between each sensor and newly obtained cluster centroids.
2 If no other sensor is reassigned, then stop, otherwise repeat from step 3.

Fig. 1. Voronoi diagram with existing coverage holes.

Fig. 2. Coverage hole exists around standard edge.

Fig. 4. Calculating coverage percentage.

Fig. 3. Voronoi diagram with a maximum sensing range.

algorithm with a mobile sink node in [6] for increasing network per­
formance and lifetime. Here cluster heads send their data to the sink
node at every interval. A multi-parameter reverse glowworm swarm
optimization mechanism was proposed by the researchers in [7] for
energy-efficient sensor movement to minimize the repetition of the
coverage area by the efficient moves performed by the sensors from a
populated area to some pre-defined grid-points in the sensing region.
Several existing bio-inspired optimization algorithms for swarm Fig. 5. Multi-hop mechanism.
movement are used in wireless sensor networks to improve the effi­
ciency of the networks. The authors proposed a multi-objective

3
A. Chowdhury and D. De
Algorithm 3
Voronoi-GSO-K-means algorithm.
Step 1: The region of interest is divided into some pre-determined number of clusters
using the K-means algorithm, described in algorithm 1.
Step 2: Create a Voronoi cell against each clustered region, taking the K-means
cluster center as a center of the Voronoi cell. Calculate the distance from the center
to each vertex for each Voronoi cell. The maximum distance among all the
calculated distances is considered as the required sensing radius. The minimum
number of the required active sensor is equal to the number of Voronoi cells, and the
optimum position of the active node is the center of the Voronoi cell.
Step 3: The sensors are converged towards the center of the Voronoi cell using the
GSO algorithm.
Step 4: Only one sensor node is kept active in each Voronoi cell using a sleep-wake
mechanism to reduce energy consumption. The other sensor nodes in that cell will
remain in sleep mode.
Step 5: Multi-hop communication will be used depending on the distance between
the base station and the sensor node. If the distance is larger than the threshold
value, multi-hop communication will be used; otherwise, the node will
communicate directly to the base station.
Step 6: The energy level of each sensor node will be calculated in every round. If the
energy level of any active node goes below the threshold value, the node will be
considered dead, and a node currently in sleep mode will be activated to cover the
cell.
Step 7: Repeat steps 4–6 until the coverage is greater than or equal to 25% of the
sensing region.
Table 1
List for Simulation Parameters.
Parameter List Value of Parameter
The dimension of the region of interest (50 × 50) m2
Number of iterations 100, 250, 500, 750, 1000
Number of sensor nodes deployed 100, 200, 500, 1000
Total number of transmission bits (k) 4000 bit
Mass of sensor node (m) 18 gs
Initial energy of every sensor 1–5 Joule
Number of active nodes at a time 20, 40
Threshold battery power 0.02 Joule
Energy consumption on the circuit (Elec) 50 nJ/bit
Free space channel parameter (εfs) 10 pJ/bit/m2
Multi-path channel parameter (εmp) 0.0013 pJ/bit/m2
Packet size 400 bits
evolutionary algorithm in [8] based on the decomposition and hybrid­
ization of genetic algorithm and discrete particle swarm optimization to
maximize coverage rate by minimizing energy consumption. The au­
thors have proposed a coverage optimization model in [9] by continu­
ously monitoring the target node with limited energy resources based on
the genetic algorithm. They also consider the sensor’s movement for
collecting the required information from the environment. A coverage
algorithm with shortest path connectivity has been proposed to reduce
energy consumption and expand the network’s lifetime by isolating the
redundant node by the authors in [10]. Authors have proposed a
decentralized algorithm for coverage and lifetime maximization for
mobile sensors by monitoring the environment for a long time [11]. The
authors surveyed coverage problems in [12] by analyzing partial or
probabilistic coverage problems with uncertain properties. The authors
have proposed different tree-structure in [13] for node placement to
minimize energy consumption. In [14, 15], the authors have proposed
different clustering algorithms to enhance the sensor network’s lifetime
based on several parameters. A PSO-based improved localization algo­
rithm has been offered in a range-free scheme in [16]. Authors have
proposed a barrier coverage algorithm in [17] for hybrid nodes based on
the Voronoi diagram by minimizing the coverage hole. In [18], the
authors have proposed two novel sensor deployment schemes for
coverage issues in mobile WSN. The two schemes are BCBS and DCBS for
reducing coverage holes efficiency. To implement these, they have used
a Voronoi blind-zone polygon structure.
A centralized Immune-Voronoi deployment algorithm in [19] was
proposed by the authors based on binary and probabilistic models for
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Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660
Algorithm 2
Glowworm Swarm Optimization Algorithm.
Inputs:
Initial luciferin value = l0,
Initial dynamic decision domain value = r0, i.e., rid (0) = r0,
Maximum iteration number = iter_max,
Initial time, t = 1.
Outputs: Identify the most appropriate sensors to move at the centroids of the
Voronoi cell structure.
Algorithm:
1. Repeat
2. for each glowworm i do:
3. li(t) = (1 – ρ) li(t – 1) + γ J (xi (t)) // luciferin update phase
4. for each glowworm i do: // glowworm movement phase
5. {// set neighborhood glowworm
Ni (t)= {j: dij(t) < rid (t); li(t) ˂ lj(t)}; for each neighborhood glowworm, j ∈ Ni (t)
6. Calculate the probability of movement using the following equation,
lj (t) − li (t)
Pij (t) = ∑
k∈Ni(t) (lk (t) − li(t))
7. Select glowworm with the maximum probability of movement.
8. // Update location of glowworm by the following equation,
( )
xj (t) − xi (t)
xi (t + 1) = xi (t) + s
‖ xj (t) − xi (t) ‖
Where, s =| dik − √3r| belongs to step-size, || || appears as the Euclidian norm
Operator.
9. // Update neighborhood range of each glowworm
rid (t + 1) = min {rs, max{0, rid (t) + β (nt − − | Ni (t)|)}};
Where β is a constant parameter and n represents a controlling parameter that
manages the neighboring nodes.
10.}
11. Move on to the next iteration.
12.} until (t ≤ maximum iteration number).
maximizing coverage. They have considered the Voronoi diagram
properties to fulfill their aim. In [20], the authors have proposed a novel
sensor node deployment method using particle swarm optimization.
They have followed the sleep-wake mechanism to minimize the
coverage hole. In [21], authors have constructed their Voronoi diagram.
They have suggested three different VEC (VECtor based algorithm), VOR
(VORonoi based algorithm), and Minimax to reposition the particles to
optimize the coverage. They have also shown the simulation results to
prove the effectiveness of their protocols. The main objective of this
paper is coverage maximization. The lifetime of the network is not
considered in this paper.
The authors have proposed a wireless sensor network’s coverage
optimization method based on an improved whale swarm optimization
algorithm with the idea of reverse learning in [22]. The authors have
proposed an activity scheduling algorithm for maximizing coverage and
energy minimization in the field of wireless multimedia sensor networks
in [23]. The authors have proposed two nature-based algorithms –
Improved Cuckoo Search and Chaotic Flower Pollination algorithm to
maximize area coverage in [24]. In [26], Reverse Glowworm Swarm
Optimization (RGSO) algorithm was applied by the authors to enhance
the lifetime and coverage of the mobile wireless sensor networks by
restricting the movements of the sensor nodes. In [27], they have pro­
posed RGSO based on a fuzzy inference system to increase the lifetime of
the WSNs. The authors in [28] have proposed a genetic algorithm (GA)
based scheme to solve coverage and connectivity problems. The pro­
posed scheme provides k-coverage to all targets and m-connectivity to
each sensor node. In [29], authors have proposed a shortest path con­
nectivity and coverage algorithm (SPCCA) to decrease the energy con­
sumption and enhance the network lifetime for WSNs. It has a better
performance in network coverage, connectivity, connection cost, and
network lifetime than other homogeneous algorithms. The authors have
proposed an optimization framework based on the firefly algorithm
(IFA) to maximize the coverage and the charging efficiency [30]. This
method is proposed to solve the WCN deployment optimization prob­
lem. In [31], a gray wolf optimization-based clustering algorithm for the
vehicular ad-hoc network (VANETs) has been proposed by the authors,
A. Chowdhury and D. De
Fig. 6. Converging the nodes towards the optimum positions using GSO algorithm (a) Positions of nodes after iteration 10, (b) Positions of nodes after iteration 50,
(c) Positions of nodes after iteration 100, (d) Positions of nodes after iteration 200.
replicating the social behavior and hunting mechanism of gray wolfs for
creating efficient clusters. A distributed range-free node localization
algorithm for 3D-WSNs [32] has been proposed by the authors based on
a genetic algorithm. The authors have proposed an Optimized
Discharge-Curve-based Coverage Protocol (ODCP) in [33] to handle
coverage gaps within the sensing area due to the sudden failure of sensor
nodes. In [34], the authors have proposed a mechanism for coverage by
arranging the nodes using topology control principles. The authors have
proposed a hybridization model for solving localization problems in
WSNs with the help of a culture algorithm and the Artificial Bee Colony
algorithm [36]. gray wolf optimization algorithm has been used in [37]
and [39] for energy-efficient load-balancing clustering and routing
avoiding energy hole problems and coverage optimization in WSN,
respectively. In [38], the authors proposed an energy-efficient cluster­
ing-based QoS-aware routing protocol inspired by the behavior of the
birds mating optimization for WSN-based SG applications. The authors
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Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660
have proposed a secure routing and monitoring mechanism for
IoT-based WSNs in [40] and the techniques for synchronizing data
management in WSNs for IoT applications [41]. The authors in [42]
have proposed a secure inter-cluster multiple-key distribution scheme
for WSNs. Researchers have proposed a PSO-based energy-efficient
coverage control mechanism [43] for WSN. In [44] and [45], the authors
proposed a routing mechanism for WSN based on data flow controlling
technology and localization methods for efficient aggregation, respec­
tively. The researchers proposed an optimal multi-path scheduling
scheme with multiple mobile sinks for WSNs in [46]. Several
bio-inspired algorithm-based node localization methods are applied in
the field of WSN. The authors have proposed a node localization
mechanism for WSN using the butterfly optimization algorithm in [47]
and elephant herding optimization and tree growth algorithm in [48].
From the above discussion, we can see that the maximum existing
research concentrates on decreasing energy consumption or increasing
A. Chowdhury and D. De
Fig. 7. Converging trajectory of the sensor nodes towards centroids of the
Voronoi cells.
coverage optimization of the networks. In the proposed approach, both
the enhancement lifetime of the networks and coverage issues are
addressed to balance consumed energy and the total covering the area
by the sensors in the sensing region. First, we calculate the optimum
positions of sensors are calculated using the K-means algorithm. Next,
we determine the required radius of the sensing region using the Vor­
onoi cell structure to achieve maximum coverage. Then, the nodes are
placed in their optimum positions using the GSO algorithm. Our pro­
posed approach can maximize coverage up to 99.99% and enhance the
network’s lifetime with the help of the sleep-wake mechanism.
3. Proposed model
3.1. Coverage-lifetime problem statement
Maximizing network coverage is responsible for enhancing network
lifetime. It depends on minimizing depleted energy by the sensor nodes.
The mobile sensor nodes need to rearrange their initial positions to
magnify the coverage and diminish the depleted energy due to sensor
movement, sensing ability, and redundancy in area coverage. The
problem is defined as the redeployment of the sensors from their initial
positions to maintain a balance between area coverage and dissipated
energy. This article aims to solve this problem by utilizing the Voronoi
cell structure to divide the whole region of interest (ROI) into several
Voronoi polygons. K-means clustering algorithm is used here for clus­
tering, and the cluster centers obtained from the K-means clustering
algorithm are used as the center of the Voronoi cells. The movement of
sensors to their optimum position is governed by the Glowworm Swarm
Optimization (GSO) algorithm.
The energy-efficient coverage optimization in wireless sensor net­
works based on the Voronoi-GSO-K-means algorithm is systematically
specified as a maximization problem that intends to magnify the lifetime
of the networks by increasing the total area coverage and minimizing the
total consumed energy. The lifetime of a sensor cover Cs is denoted as L
(Cs) that could not exceed the residual energy of a particular sensor node
in Cs, which has the minimum lifetime, i.e., L(Cs) = min [Cs(bi)]. The
problem is defined as,
∑ sensing radius for all sensors which is identical and distance(pi, x) is the
Maximize ixi
∑
Subject to Bip xi ≤ bi (∀si ) (1)
p tioned at p, is defined as R = {xdistance(p, x) ≤ r, ∀x ∈ SD}, where SD is
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Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660
( )
xi ≥ 0 ∀Cp
where i represents the index of the sensor covers, xi is the sensor cover, si
is the sensor node having index i, bi denotes the lifetime of the sensor si,
Cp is the set of sensor cover with index p, and Bip is the constant for the
1, if si ∈ Cp
constraint matrix and is denoted as: Bip = { .
0, otherwise
3.2. Assumptions of the proposed system
The assumptions are the following:
• A 2-Dimensional region of interest (ROI) having a size of 50 × 50 m2
is considered.
• All mobile sensor nodes are distributed randomly in the ROI, and
each of them is considered a glowworm.
• Every sensor node has its battery power and inbuilt memory to store
the data.
• The initial energy of each sensor is considered at the range between
(1 – 5) Joule.
• At the time of movement, the sensor depends on its residual energy
as same as glowworm relies upon its luciferin value.
• No obstacle in the sensing area has been considered for maintaining
simplicity.
• The identification of the sensor node having the lowest residual en­
ergy is the responsibility of the base station.
• The mobile sensor’s energy is depleted due to movement in the
sensing region, data transmission, and reception with the base sta­
tion and other neighboring sensors after each round of the execution.
3.3. Mathematical model of the proposed system
Let S, a wireless sensor network, be a set of n homogeneous nodes
with fixed and limited sensing range, where S = {s1, s2, s3, ………sn}
are randomly distributed in a 2-dimensional sensing region of area A.
Using the Voronoi diagram, we decompose the search space into many
regions of convex polygons around each node so that all nodes in the
polygon around siare adjacent to sj than any other nodes in S. Voronoi
diagram is dividing a 2-dimensional plane into some convex polygons
depends upon the closeness to the points following some specific
properties.
Voronoi region V(si) for each node siis represented by the following
equation:
{ ⃒ ⃒ }
V(si ) = a : |si − a| ≤ ⃒sj − a⃒, ∀j ∕
=i
Where V(si) is a collection of nodes that are adjacent to si than any
other nodes of another site. Voronoi diagram is constructed by all sets of
nodes of all sites.
So Voronoi diagram is represented by all the Voronoi regions of
sensors of different sites as
VD = {V(si ), si ∈ S }.
In this segment, we illustrate the Voronoi diagram model mathe­
matically by defining some essential components adopted in the wireless
sensor network here.
Definition 1. (Coverage Region): The coverage region RS of the wireless
sensor network is defined as RS = {xdistance(pi, x) ≤ r, ∀x ∈ Ri},
where the position of the sensor node si is denoted as pi and r is the
Euclidean distance between two nodes.
Definition 2. (Covering Disk): The covering disk of a sensor s posi­
the 2-dimensional space where sensors are deployed randomly.
A. Chowdhury and D. De
Fig. 8. Different coverage percentages after a different number of rounds have been shown for the taken parameters (a) After round 50, (b) After round 30,000, (c)
After round 40,000, and (d) After round 50,000.
Definition 3. (Coverage Hole): A coverage hole Cg is a space of Voronoi
region V(si) which is uncovered by any of the sensing disks in the ROI
(Region of Interest). Within this surrounding area of the hole, no such
communications have been made among sensor nodes.
Definition 4. (Boundary Nodes): Boundary nodes are the nodes adja­
cent to the coverage hole, i.e., boundary nodes are the boundary of the
coverage hole.
Definition 5. (Coverage Ratio): It is defined as the proportion of the
covered area by the sensor AS to the full deployed area Ad of the ROI of
the Voronoi diagram, i.e., ηc = AASd .
Definition 6. (Neighbor Node): If S ={s1, s2, s3, ………sn}sensor
nodes are deployed in the region RS and C(s1),C(s2),C(s3)………C(sn) are
denoted as covering disk generated by S, then siand sjare called as
Voronoi neighbors, provided C(si) and C(sj) share a common edge.
Definition 7. (Redundant Sensor): A redundant sensor is another
overlay covering the disk.
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Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660
Property 1. Sensing range of Voronoi regions depends upon three pa­
rameters: (i) whether sensing range covers the cell, Cs,(i) whether voronoi cell
covers the sensing range, , Cv and (iii) overlapping between sensing range
and Voronoi cell, Ov .
Lemma 1. Let s be a random node, where s ∈ S and {si1 , si2 ,…….. sik } ∈ sit ,
the set of neighbor nodes of s then for any node within the search space of area
A satisfies the following property: Rs ∩ Rsprime ⫅Ukt=1 Rsit , where Rs, Rs′ and
Rsit are denoted as the covering disk of sensor s, s′ and sit (t = 1, 2,
3……k) respectively.
Property 2. Based on lemma 1, if the covering disk of sensor s′ intersects
with the covering disk of another sensor s, then it is said that the intersection
of these two areas is also covered by s and s′ ’s covering disks as s and s′ are
the Voronoi neighbors.
Lemma 2. A coverage hole exists around any arbitrary vertex v of any
Voronoi cell if the distance from a sensor to the vertex of its corresponding
Voronoi cell is greater than the sensing range of that sensor, i.e., that cor­
responding area of that vertex is not covered by the sensing range of that
sensor.
A. Chowdhury and D. De Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660

Fig. 9. Different percentage of coverage for the number of rounds (a) After round 50, (b) After round 51,706, (c) After round 60,000, and (d) After round 70,000.

Table 2
Coverage%age after a different number of rounds for different numbers of nodes
deployed in the ROI.
Number of Coverage percentage Number of sensor nodes deployed
rounds for the number of 100 250 500 750 1000
sensor nodes

5000 Coverage percentage 96.6 99.99 99.99 98.68 99.83

10,000 (%) 69.64 99.99 99.98 98.7 99.78
15,000 0 88.36 99.76 98.69 99.85
20,000 0 80.55 99.68 98.25 99.77
25,000 0 27.96 98.49 98.34 99.86
30,000 0 7.35 92.78 98.54 99.87
35,000 0 0 86.39 93.79 99.78
40,000 0 0 75.66 94.11 99.74
45,000 0 0 57.33 92.64 99.91
50,000 0 0 38.75 76.74 99.78
55,000 0 0 21.17 76.91 99.82
60,000 0 0 0 64.31 99.78
65,000 0 0 0 52.67 97.28 Fig. 10. Percentage of the coverage area for the number of deployed nodes.
70,000 0 0 0 27.91 97.26
75,000 0 0 0 17.76 87.18
80,000 0 0 0 9.97 50.65 Let the area covered by a Voronoi cell is Rs with a sensor node at the
position s and the area coverage of a particular vertex v of that voronoi
cell which is not covered by the sensing range of that particular sensor

8
A. Chowdhury and D. De Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660

Fig. 11. Box-Whiskers plot representation of the percentage of the coverage area with varying numbers of deployed nodes.

Table 3
Comparative study of the proposed method with the existing methods.
No. of Active Sensors Coverage%age achieved in existing approaches Coverage%age achieved in Proposed Approach

VOR [21] Minimax [21] Vedge [21] CIVA [20] BCBS[19] DCBS[19]

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
20 90 90 90 93 94 94 98.744
30 91 91 93 96 95 95.5 99.5729
50 91 92 94 96.5 95 95.5 99.4669
80 91 92.5 94 96.5 95 96 99.3282
100 91 92.5 94 97 95 96 98.7781
120 91 92.5 94 97 95 96 98.7203
150 91 92.5 94 97 95 96 98.7362

node at s is Rv, then Rs∩Rv = ∅ (empty due to uncovered), if distance(s,
v) > r, if r is the covering or sensing radius of the Voronoi cell. From
Fig. 1, b, the distance from any vertex of the Voronoi cell containing
sensor E is much greater than the sensing radius a. Obviously, this vertex
is uncovered by sensor E.
Lemma 3. Since two adjacent Voronoi cells share a standard edge, if the
covering range is not covered up to that common edge, then a coverage hole
appears between the two covering a range of two sensor nodes in their cor­
responding Voronoi cells, as shown around hv in Fig. 2.
Theorem 1. In the Voronoi diagram, maximum coverage by the sensor
node depends on the center’s distance to the highest distant boundary point of
a voronoi cell.
To prove this theorem, some basic preliminaries are:
i) In the case of arbitrary sensor deployment, the cluster centers are
considered the center of the Voronoi cells obtained from the k-
means algorithm.
ii) We assume that each Voronoi cell contains one active node at a
time.
iii) The optimum positions of all active nodes are considered as the
center of all Voronoi cells.
iv) All sensor nodes have the same sensing radius r.
Without loss of generality, let us consider s1 and s2 are two randomly
selected adjacent nodes sharing a common edge where S = {s1, s2,
s3, ………sn}. According to definition 1 and lemma 1, the coverage
region of s1 and s2 are Rs1 and Rs2 resp. In Fig. 3, (v1, v2, v3, v4, v5) are the
set of vertices of the Voronoi cell containing a sensor s1 positioned at a
and (v4, v5, v6, v7, v8) are the set of vertices of the corresponding Voronoi
cell which contains sensor node s2 positioned at b. Among the two sets
of vertices, v4 and v5 are common to both cells.
From Fig. 3, let us consider,
( )
d1 = distance(s1 , v1 ) > Uji=2 distance si , vj ,
where si is the center of each Voronoi cell (i=2,3. …. n) and vj is the set
of vertices of all the Voronoi cells ∈ S, containing five vertices each.
Considering lemma 2 and 3, there will be much less possibility of
coverage hole’s existence in the Voronoi polygons if d1is taking as a
radius of the sensing range of all sensor nodes because the sensing range
of radius d1 covers a maximum area of the search space.
Hence, the theorem holds.∎
3.4. Mechanism of the proposed model
In this proposed methodology, we intend to maximize total area
coverage and the network’s lifetime. The coverage maximization of the

9
A. Chowdhury and D. De Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660

Fig. 12. Comparison of different mechanisms for the effective coverage area.

Fig. 13. Box-Whiskers plot representation of different mechanisms for the effective coverage area.

mobile WSNs is done in the following phases.
• Phase 1: First, we divide the Region of Interest (ROI) into several
clusters and determine the cluster center using the K-means
algorithm.
• Phase 2: Determine the sensing radius for optimum coverage using
the Voronoi cell structure.
• Phase 3: Glowworm Swarm Optimization (GSO) algorithm is applied
here to move sensor nodes to optimum positions.
• Phase 4: Determine the percentage of the whole coverage area in the
ROI.
• Phase 5: Multi-hop transmission and sleep-wake mechanisms are
used for the network’s energy optimization.

10
A. Chowdhury and D. De Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660

Table 4 Table 5
Achieved coverage with varying number of active sensors and sensing radius Achieved coverage with varying number of active sensors and sensing radius
having deployed sensors 150. having deployed sensors 250.
ROI Number of Number of Optimum Coverage ROI Number of Number of Optimum Coverage
Deployed Sensors Active Sensors Sensing Radius Achieved Deployed Sensors Active Sensors Sensing Radius Achieved

10 × 150 0 0 0 50 × 250 0 0 0
10 50
10 × 150 10 2.47 99.8653 50 × 250 30 7.96 99.6729
10 50
10 × 150 20 2.15 98.744 50 × 250 40 7.36 99.6224
10 50
10 × 150 30 1.81 99.6546 50 × 250 50 7.73 99.4669
10 50
10 × 150 40 1.5354 99.3508 50 × 250 60 6.894 99.1042
10 50
10 × 150 50 1.5379 99.159 50 × 250 70 5.9042 99.0599
10 50
10 × 150 60 1.6181 98.943 50 × 250 80 8.5719 98.3508
10 50
10 × 150 70 1.3829 98.9103 50 × 250 90 5.9372 98.7674
10 50
10 × 150 80 1.2643 98.7874 50 × 250 100 6.5113 98.4103
10 50
10 × 150 90 1.3618 98.5557 50 × 250 110 5.6083 98.5119
10 50
10 × 150 100 1.3644 98.3367 50 × 250 120 5.6076 98.3406
10 50

Fig. 14. Achieved coverage with varying active sensors and sensing radius
when deployed sensors = 150.
Phase 1. : Cluster formation and Cluster center determination using
the K-means algorithm.
K-means clustering algorithm [15, 35] has been used here as it is
suitable for clustering a considerable amount of data, which is suitable
for the proposed scenario. Here, we divide the whole region of interest
into many clusters and identify the initial centroids randomly out of the
input data set applying the K-means algorithm. The algorithm shows
different kinds of clusters according to the different randomly selected
initial centroids. The initial centroids selected randomly lead the algo­
rithm into local optima. The performance of the K-means algorithm is
dependent on the initial cluster centers to some extent. The time
complexity of this algorithm is much lower in comparison with other
clustering algorithms. The cluster centroids determined by the K-means
algorithm are considered as optimum positions. Algorithm 1 describes
the K-means clustering algorithm.
Phase 2. : Determination of optimum sensing radius
Since the random deployment of the sensors can cause coverage
holes in the sensing field, so it is not an efficient approach, and deter­
ministic deployment is also a very complex thing in a large as well as a
harsh environment, so rearrangement of the deployed sensors can
enhance the network coverage and eliminate the coverage holes.
Fig. 15. Achieved coverage with varying active sensors and sensing radius
when deployed sensors = 250.
Voronoi diagrams are generally used for efficient algorithms to compute
the roundness of a set of points. The whole sensing region of the network
is divided into several parts using the concept of Voronoi cells. The
initially deployed sensors are relocated. We perform a sensing range
adjustment of each sensor utilizing the Voronoi structure so that an
optimized coverage has been accomplished with minimum consumed
energy. The cluster centers obtained from the k-means algorithm are
used as the centroid of the Voronoi cells.
Voronoi diagram is defined as a partition of sites as if any points
inside a polygon are closer to the site inside that polygon compared to
any other site. Therefore, the ROI is considered to be fully covered when
all Voronoi polygon vertices are covered.
• The distances from each center to its boundary points are calculated.
Then, the maximum distance among them is considered as the
required sensing radius.
• The minimum number of required active nodes is assumed to be
equals to the number of Voronoi cells, and the optimum position of
the nodes is considered the center of the Voronoi cell.
Phase 3. : Movement of sensors to the optimum positions using the

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A. Chowdhury and D. De Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660

Table 6 centroid of the Voronoi cells, we can preserve the networks’ total en­
Achieved coverage with varying number of active sensors and sensing radius ergy. The sensors situated at the centroid of the Voronoi cells remain
having deployed sensors = 350. active at any iteration, whereas others will be in sleep mode. The active
ROI Number of Number of Optimum Coverage sensor at the centroid of the Voronoi cell will cover the whole sensing
Deployed Active Sensors Sensing Radius Achieved region of that cell based on the optimum sensing radius at phase 2. When
Sensors the battery power is exhausted or going to be dead, i.e., below the
100 × 350 0 0 0 threshold value, then another sensor nearest to that exhausted one be­
100 comes alive and will relocate at the centroid of that cell based on the
100 × 350 60 13.13 99.439
mechanism of the GSO algorithm.
100
100 × 350 70 13.58 99.3161 Phase 4. : Determination of coverage percentage
100
100 × 350 80 11.17 99.3282 After determining the required sensing radius in each Voronoi cell,
100 circles are drawn with the optimum position and sensing radius as the
100 × 350 90 11.604 98.7734
100
center and the circle’s radius, respectively. The area covered by the
100 × 350 100 10.5549 98.7781 circles, i.e., the area under the sensing region of the nodes, is colored
100 green, and the uncovered area is red-colored. The total number of pixels
100 × 350 110 10.5511 98.6139 and the number of green pixels of the region of interest are calculated
100
using the concept of the mask of image processing [25]. Then the
100 × 350 120 9.76 98.6203
100 coverage percentage is calculated as follows:
100 × 350 130 9.9785 98.4337 In Fig. 4, the total number of pixels = 664,974
100 The number of green pixels = 656,431
100 × 350 140 10.4372 98.1896 Therefore, the coverage percentage = 98.72%
100
100 × 350 150 10.6861 97.9162 Phase 5. : Energy optimization with the help of multi-hop trans­
100 mission and sleep-wake mechanism
100 × 350 160 9.8926 97.8916
100
Multi-hop mechanism
Multi-hop communication technology has different advantages, such
as it reduces interference, increases spectrum reuse, extends radio
convergence, and reduces energy consumption. In the proposed tech­
nology, the multi-hop mechanism has is used for data transmission. A
threshold distance d0 near about 87 m is assumed here. If the distance
between the node which is transmitting the data and the sink node is less
than d0, the node will directly transmit the data to the base station;
otherwise, the node will transmit the data to a node that is nearer to the
base station (multi-hop mechanism), and then the intermediate node
will transmit that data to the base station.
In Fig. 5, the nodes having a distance greater than d0 (87 m) from the
sink node use multi-hop paths. At first, data is sent to the node having a
distance less than d0 than the sink node and has adequate energy to
transmit (the path is denoted by ), then via this node, the data is
sent to the sink node (the path is denoted by ). The nodes having
a distance less than d0 from the sink node can directly communicate with
the sink node.
Fig. 16. Achieved coverage with varying active sensors and sensing radius
when deployed sensors = 350. Sleep-wake mechanism
Power consumption is an essential issue in WSNs. To save power
Glowworm Swarm Optimization algorithm consumption, a new algorithm has been applied in which no node will
be in idle mode. In this case, the nodes will have three different modes:
According to the Glowworm Swarm optimization (GSO) algorithm
active, sleep, and dead. In each Voronoi cell, there will be only one
[1-6], it is assumed that glowworms are deployed randomly in the
active node at a time, while other nodes will remain in sleep mode. The
searching region of the object. Each glowworm has carried a luminous
percentage of coverage will not be decreased until an active node is
object named luciferin. The intensity of the luciferin is directly pro­
present in each cell, as it can cover the whole cell. Therefore, the energy
portional to the light-emitting capability of a glowworm. In GSO, every
consumption in sleep mode is negligible. Initially, it is assumed that each
glowworm shifts towards the dazzling one than itself. In every move, the
node contains the energy of a range of 1–5 Joule. Due to data trans­
position of each glowworm will be changed and the intensity of the
mission and reception in each round, some energy is reduced from each
light-emitting material is also reduced due to the movement of sensor
active node. When the energy of an active node is less than or equal to
nodes and data transmission. Every glowworm prefers another glow­
the threshold value, i.e., 0.02 Joule, the node is considered to be a dead
worm as its neighbor by estimating whether it is located within its
node. Then the next node in that cell, which is still in sleep mode, will be
local-decision range or not. The further moves within the sensing region
activated. In this way, until all nodes of a cell are dead, the full coverage
depend upon two parameters, the luciferin intensity and distance be­
of the network is achieved.
tween that glowworm with others. In each iteration, the light-emitting
The energy required to transmit k-bit data packet over distance d is
intensity of luciferin and the distance between two glowworms will
calculated as [15],
change due to their movements and energy consumption. The GSO al­
gorithm has been applied to the sensor nodes to converge the nodes in ETX (k, d) = ETX− elec (k) + ETX− amp (k, d) (2)
the centroid of the Voronoi cells. By converging the sensors at the

12
 A. Chowdhury and D. De
Table 7
Comparison of the proposed approach with existing approaches.
Properties Existing approaches on coverage and network lifetime enhancement in WSN The proposed coverage
optimization
algorithm
K-means and mid-point Novel Efficient Centralized immune Improved Cuckoo Search whale group gray wolf optimizer with PSO-based Energy
algorithm [7] Deployment Voronoi deployment & Chaotic Flower optimization [23] an enhanced hierarchy Efficient Coverage
Schemes for Sensor algorithm [20] Pollination optimization based algorithm [39] Control algorithm [43]
Coverage [19] [22]

Working Policy Network lifetime Sensor deployment Coverage maximization Improved Cuckoo Search Network coverage Address wireless sensor Improve coverage rate Energy-efficient
enhancement based on for coverage issue and energy conservation & Chaotic Flower optimization based network coverage and reduce energy coverage optimization
K-means clustering and based on BCBS / based on centralized Pollination optimization on Whale Group optimization by gray wolf consumption based on based on K-means-
midpoint algorithm DCBS immune-Voronoi for maximizing area algorithm optimizer with enhanced particle swarm Voronoi-GSO
deployment algorithm coverage hierarchy optimization algorithm
Maximum Not considered 96% 97% 89% 95.80% Not considered Not considered 99.99%
13

coverage
achieved
Type of sensor Static Mobile Mobile Mobile Mobile Static Static Mobile nodes with
nodes random deployment
Calculation of X X √ X X X √ √
optimum
sensing radius
Network lifetime √ X √ X X X X √
consideration
Follows sleep- X X X X X X X √
wake
mechanism
Multi-hop √ X X X X X X √
strategy
applied

Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660

A. Chowdhury and D. De
ETX (k, d) = Eelec × k + εfs × k × d2 if d < d0 (3)
ETX (k, d) = Eelec × k + εmp × k × d4 if d ≥ d0 (4)
Otherwise, ifd > d0, then the threshold value for multi-hop
communication is used as,
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
εfs
d0 = (5)
εmp
For receiving a k-bit data packet, the required energy is calculated as
[15],
ERX (k) = Eelec × k (6)
Algorithm 3 describes our proposed methodology, which uses the
Voronoi structure, K-means, GSO algorithm, a sleep-wake, and multi-
hop mechanism for energy-efficient coverage optimization.
4. Simulation results and analysis
The performance of our proposed Voronoi-Glowworm Swarm
Optimization-K-means algorithm for coverage and energy optimization
for mobile wireless sensor networks is being evaluated by the simulation
environment in this segment. For this, several simulations have been
performed to evaluate the proposed model. The simulation environment
is composed of (50 × 50) m2 region of interest, with a varying number of
sensor nodes distributed randomly in the sensing region like 100, 200,
500, and 1000 sensor nodes, respectively. For simulating the environ­
ment for this mechanism, we have used Matlab, 17a version. A list of
simulation parameters has been shown in table 1. All simulations have
been conducted with Intel Core i5 3rd generation 3.6 GHz processor,
240 GB solid-state drive (SSD), 4 GB RAM, and Windows 10 Home
operating system. Applying the coverage maximization model discussed
in this article, the outcomes of the experiments have been presented in
this section for area coverage and the increase of lifetime for randomly
deployed mobile sensors.
Case 1. Convergence by the sensor nodes to their optimum
positions
The simulation environment, results, and analysis of Algorithm 2
described in phase 3 are explained briefly in case 1. The proposed GSO
algorithm has been applied to randomly distributed sensor nodes in the
(50 × 50) m2 sensing region. The number of active nodes at any moment
is 40. The population size is 200. Initially, the deployed, non-converged
sensor nodes are shown by green-colored markers. The cluster centers
obtained by the K-means algorithm are shown by the red-colored
marker. The region of interest is covered by the Voronoi cells, where
the cluster centers are considered the Voronoi cells’ centroids. Then the
GSO algorithm has been applied to the sensor nodes to converge the
nodes in their optimum positions. In Fig. 6, it is shown that the nodes are
gradually converging to their optimum position. The converged nodes
are marked by blue color.
So in Fig. 6, it is shown that the nodes have gradually converged to
their optimal positions using the GSO algorithm. Fig. 7 also represents
the trajectory path of the sensor nodes how they are converging to the
centroids of the Voronoi cells in the sensing region.
Case 2. Determination of coverage percentage after placing the
nodes in their optimum positions for different numbers of rounds
of transmission
Green and red colors, respectively, represent the covered and un­
covered sensing regions. The cell is considered to be covered as far as at
least one node is alive in that cell. In the simulation, as the number of
rounds increases, the covered area decreases gradually. However, since
in the proposed approach, the sleep-wake mechanism has been used to
reduce energy consumption, the number of alive nodes decreases very
slowly. As a result, the coverage percentage decreases gradually,
14
Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660
preserving coverage for a longer time. In Fig. 8 and Fig. 9, the number of
nodes deployed is 500, 1000 respectively, in the (50 × 50) m2 region of
interest. The initial energy of the nodes is approximated to be 1–5
Joules. The number of active nodes at a time is 20. In the simulation, it
has been observed that in Fig. 8, only 2.2% of nodes are active up to
50,000 rounds. Consequently, the coverage percentage has been
decreased to 30% approximately. On the other hand, the coverage
percentage is still 86% in round 70,000, as shown in Fig. 9.
Figs. 8 and 9 show that if the number of deployed nodes is increased,
the lifetime of the wireless sensor networks will also be increased
accordingly.
Case 3. Determination of coverage percentage for various popu­
lation sizes and number of rounds
Extensive experiments have been conducted on the proposed
mechanism using the Matlab 17a version for simulation. For doing this,
diverse numbers of sensor nodes ranging from 100 to 1000 are distrib­
uted randomly in the region of interest of (50 × 50) m2 area. Each sensor
is assumed to have the initial energy of (1–5) Joule, and the threshold
energy of each sensor is considered as 0.02 Joule. The percentage of the
coverage has been determined concerning various population sizes
ranging from 100 sensor nodes to 1000 sensor nodes and the varying
number of rounds of iteration ranging from 5000 to 80,000 of the
experiment conducted by the simulation environment in Matlab. The
simulation results are summarized in Table 2, and the graphical repre­
sentation is shown in Fig. 10.
In Fig. 10, different coverage percentage of area is shown for various
sensor nodes deployed. We observed that as the number of iterations
increases, the percentage of coverage of the sensing region decreases by
analyzing the experimental results. From Fig. 10 and Table 2, it is
concluded that in the proposed algorithm, the network lifetime is
significantly enhanced by increasing the number of deployed nodes.
Fig. 11 also shows the box-whisker plot representation of the results
obtained by the proposed mechanism. The percentage of the coverage
area varies with the number of deployed sensors in the sensing region.
5. Performance evaluation
In this section, we evaluate and compare the performance of our
proposed mechanism with the existing six other deployment mecha­
nisms, such as VOR [21], Minimax [21], Vedge [21], CIVA [20], and
BCBS [19], DCBS [19]. All experiments are performed in the
two-dimensional sensing field of (50 × 50) m2.
Lots of experiments have been performed with varying numbers of
deployed sensor nodes ranging from 20 to 150. From table 3, it is found
that the coverage percentage of the proposed method is almost 98–99%
which is relatively higher than other existing methods. The figure shows
the best coverage performance by our proposed approach. The com­
parison results show that our proposed algorithm can increase the net­
work’s lifetime as the coverage increases remarkably. Fig. 12 shows the
coverage achievement using six existing algorithms and our proposed
method for different active sensors. From Fig. 12, it can be observed that
the coverage reaches its maximum value by our proposed model with a
remarkable performance. Finally, we plot the curves of the average
coverage by all algorithms concerning the number of active sensors
present in the region of interest.
Box-whisker plot representation of the comparison of effective
coverage area achieved by our proposed approach with several other
existing mechanisms has been shown in Fig. 13. It is observed that the
percentage of the coverage area reaches its maximum value by our
proposed model, which can be marked as an outstanding achievement.
For analyzing the results obtained from simulation, several experi­
ments are conducted with different parameters. Table 4 represents the
area coverage achieved by the proposed mechanism with a varying
number of active sensors after the rearrangement of the initially
deployed sensors in the 10 × 10 m2 sensing region of interest. In this
A. Chowdhury and D. De
experiment, in the beginning, the total number of the deployed sensor is
150, and the numbers of active sensors are varying from 10 to 100.
Therefore, from table 4, we get different achieved coverage with varying
optimum sensing radius. Fig. 14 demonstrates the graphical represen­
tation of table 4. In this graph, active sensors are represented by the x-
axis. The y-axis represents both the optimum sensing radius and the
achieved coverage when the number of deployed sensors is 150.
For further analysis of this experiment, Table 5 represents the per­
centage of the achieved coverage when the numbers of initially
deployed sensors are 250. In this case, the active sensor varies from 30 to
120. From this table, we can build an idea of how achieved coverage
varies with optimum sensing radius, and the corresponding graphical
representation is shown in Fig. 15. Here blue line and the orange line
represent the optimum sensing radius and the corresponding coverage of
the sensor networks, respectively.
Similarly, Table 6 represents the percentage of the total coverage
area of the region of interest with varying active number of sensors and
changeable optimum sensing radius of those mobile sensors in the
sensing region. In this experiment, the numbers of deployed sensors are
350. Fig. 16 also represents the corresponding graphical representation
of the data coming from Table 6. By analyzing several experimental
results, we have noticed the consistency in the coverage area achieved
with the varying number of active sensors and optimum sensing radius
of the mobile sensor nodes in the sensing region.
For better analysis of our proposed technique, it has been compared
with other existing mechanisms in Table 7, where the main contribu­
tions of our proposed approach are being summarized. Most of the
existing methodologies are either focused on coverage maximization or
the lifetime enhancement of the wireless sensor network. However, our
proposed approach focuses on both coverage maximization and lifetime
enhancement and can increase the coverage percentage significantly
and enhance network lifetime simultaneously.
6. Open research problem and future scope
Despite the outstanding performance that came from the proposed
method in area coverage and lifetime enhancement in mobile WSNs
compared with the existing algorithms, some arguments are still there
that need to be discussed in the future.
Challenge 1: In this article, we have not considered the obstacles in
the sensing region of the mobile sensor nodes, i.e., how this proposed
model works in the presence of obstacles in the region of interest at
the time of sensor movement to find their optimal positions. Thus
obstacle-avoidance mechanism at the time of sensor movement can
be added as an extension of this study.
Challenge 2: For unmanned aerial vehicles considering the 3-D
model, the proposed technique can be applied as an extended
version to cover almost the entire 3-D terrain of the sensing region of
unmanned aerial vehicles.
Challenge 3: Reinforcement learning or deep learning techniques can
also be applied with the glowworm swarm optimization algorithm
for better coverage and enhancing the lifetime of the green mobile
wireless sensor networks.
Challenge 4: Glowworm swarm optimization technique can also be
merged with corona-based sensor deployment for maximizing
lifetime and area coverage of the wireless sensor networks.
Challenge 5: Energy-efficient clustering and cluster-head selection
mechanism for IoT-enabled environment can be possible using
glowworm swarm optimization algorithm with the combination of
Voronoi cell structure [49].
Challenge 6: Edge-intelligent clustering for wireless sensor networks
and sensor node deployment method based on Voronoi cell structure
and glowworm swarm optimization algorithm can be a good
research work in edge wireless sensor networks.
15
Ad Hoc Networks 122 (2021) 102660
Challenge 7: Quantum-Voronoi-Glowworm Swarm Optimization
algorithm-based node deployment strategy and clustering mecha­
nism with secure routing protocol for mobile wireless sensor net­
works [50].
Challenge 8: Block-chain-based Glowworm Swarm Optimization for
better security in the field of IoT-based live monitoring.
Challenge 9: Block-chain-based security control in UAV movement
using Glowworm Swarm Optimization.
Challenge 10: Hybrid-Glowworm Swarm Optimization with Ant
Colony Optimization for energy-efficient clustering and routing in
the field of wireless sensor networks.
7. Conclusion
Sensor node distribution in the sensing region is one of the crucial
issues in wireless sensor networks. Both qualities of monitoring and
improved network lifetime are essential features for improving the ef­
ficiency of WSN. The quality of monitoring mainly depends on the
percentage of coverage in the region of interest of the network. There­
fore coverage is one of the essential issues to be considered at the time of
sensor deployment. The glowworm swarm optimization (GSO) mecha­
nism is one of the latest and most efficient Bio-inspired optimization
techniques in recent days. In this article, the proposed approach will
simultaneously maximize the coverage and enhance the lifetime of the
deployed wireless sensor networks with the help of the GSO algorithm,
K-means algorithm, and Voronoi cell structure. In this approach, the
optimum sensing radius is calculated with the help of a Voronoi cell
structure for efficient sensor deployment. GSO algorithm is applied for
converging the sensors to the centroid of the Voronoi cell structure in the
sensing region. Multi-hop transmission and sleep-wake mechanisms
have been applied in this technique to reduce energy consumption. The
proposed algorithm is compared with other existing algorithms in terms
of total area coverage in the region of interest and the total existing live
sensors after the algorithm’s execution. We have examined the perfor­
mance of our proposed mechanism through comprehensive simulation.
The simulation outcome shows the coverage is achieved up to 99.99%
with a minimum number of active nodes compared to other existing
methods. In this approach, the network lifetime increases proportion­
ately with the increasing size of the population. Furthermore, our pro­
posed approach can provide more than 98% coverage even when the
percentage of the dead node is 25.6%, which leads to the enhancement
of the lifetime of sensor networks and maximization of the coverage
area. Thus, the proposed technique is concluded as an intelligent green
technique for Mobile WSNs, which escalates the network’s lifetime.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the Department of Science and Tech­
nology (DST) for sanctioning a project with Ref. No. DST FIST SR/FST/
ETI-296/2011 and TEQIP –III, MAKAUT, WB.
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Aparajita Chowdhury is an Assistant Professor of Information
Technology dept. at Techno Main, Salt Lake, Kolkata, India.
She received her bachelor’s degree in Information Technology
from North Bengal University and master’s degree in Infor­
mation Technology from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University
of Technology (Formerly West Bengal University of Technol­
ogy), West Bengal, India. Currently she is pursuing her Ph. D in
the field of wireless sensor networks. Her research interests
encompass wireless sensor networks and cluster computing.
Debashis De is Professor Department of Computer Science and
Engineering & Director of School of Computational Science of
MAKAUT, WB, India, and Adjunct research fellow, University
of Western Australia, Australia. He is Senior Member-IEEE,
Fellow IETE, Secretary, CSI Kol. He was awarded the presti­
gious Boyscast Fellowship by the Department of Science and
Technology, Government of India, to work at the Herriot-Watt
University, Scotland, UK. He received the Endeavour Fellow­
ship Award from 2008-2009 by DEST Australia to work at the
University of Western Australia. He received the Young Sci­
entist award both in 2005 at New Delhi and in 2011 in Istanbul,
Turkey, from the International Union of Radio Science,
Belgium. In 2016 he received JC bose research award by IETE, New Delhi. In 2019 he
received Siksha Ranta Award by the Govt. of West Bengal. He developed the Centre of
mobile cloud computing for IoT. He published in 300 journals and 100 conference pa­
pers,12 books, and filed 9 patents. His h index is 32, citation 4650.