A Decreasing k-means algorithm for the Disk Covering Tour Problem in wireless sensor networks

This paper studies a Disk Covering Tour Problem (DCTP) for reducing the energy consumption of a mobile robot's movement to provide services for sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN). Given a set of locations of sensor nodes and a starting location of mobile robot, the DCTP is to find a minimum cost tour of a sequence of tour stops for the mobile robot to serve sensor nodes by keeping every sensor node within a specified distance of a tour stop. We propose an algorithm, called Decreasing k-means (Dk-means), to find an approximate solution to the DCTP. The idea is to select a minimum number of disks or circles of a fixed radius to cover all sensor nodes, and then to find a minimum cost tour passing all disk centers. The simulation results show the proposed algorithm outperforms the related CSP (Covering Salesman Problem) algorithm and the QiF algorithm.