A Joint Design of Deployment and Routing for Lifetime Maximization in Pipeline Sensor Networks

Pipeline monitoring is of the essence for nowadays oil and natural gas delivery. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is the best candidate due to its low cost, ad-hoc feature, and ease of maintenance. However, there are quite limited WSNs that are particularly designed for long pipeline monitoring. Meanwhile, directly applying existing protocols may cause insufficient use of these WSNs and downgraded performance, especially on the lifetime of the network, which is a crucial metric for pipeline monitoring. Some efforts for lifetime extension do not fully utilize the features of pipeline or has some impractical assumptions when applying to pipeline scenarios. In this paper, we fully consider the practical factors and unique features of pipeline and propose a joint design of deployment and routing for such typed networks. In our design, a novel sensor deployment and a corresponding load balancing routing protocol are derived in terms of the maximized lifetime. The design considers the node damage, redundant data generated from the same event, and energy holes caused by dead nodes. Extensive simulation results validate our optimization and demonstrate our design can significantly improve the lifetime of the network and enjoy less overhead than the existing work. The simulation platform we used the MATLAB platform.