A Min-Actor algorithm for connected dominating set formation in WSAN

As the virtual backbone of the network, connected dominating set (CDS) plays an important role in supporting data communication, reducing the routing overhead, and enhancing the scalability of the network. Traditional CDS construction algorithms are usually applied to the networks with homogeneous nodes, e.g., a pure wireless sensor network. In the past few years, Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks (WSANs) have attracted growing attentions due to its capabilities of sensing and gathering information, as well as performing certain tasks by actor nodes. One of the most critical issues in WSAN is how to construct an appropriate CDS with the consideration of heterogeneous nodes. Specifically, how to construct the CDS that contains minimum number of actors, so that the movement of actors poses a minimal threat to the integrity of the CDS. In this paper, we take the nature of the actor nodes into consideration and propose a CDS construction algorithm named Min-Actor algorithm (MIA), which can reduce nodes' movement constraints in WSAN. Simulation results confirm that MIA can effectively reduce the number of the actors in CDS, thus reducing the impact of actors' movement on the network.