Heuristics for minimizing interference in sensor networks

Abstract

Reducing interference is one of the main challenges in sensor networks and also in ad hoc networks. The amount of interference experienced by a node v corresponds to the number of nodes whose transmission range covers v. We study the problem of minimizing maximum interference for a given set of nodes in a sensor network. This requires finding a connected topology which minimizes the maximum interference for set of nodes. It is proved to be NP-hard by Buchin[5]. In this paper, we propose an algorithm named "Minimizing Interference in Sensor Network (MI-S)", to minimize the maximum interference for a set of nodes in polynomial time maintaining the connectivity of the graph. We also present a variation of this algorithm based on local search technique. We check the results by applying the standard approximation algorithms and study different cases in which they are applicable. Finally we analyze some typical instances as well as average case instances to verify the proposed algorithm. © 2009 Springer.