Abstract
This paper proposes an efficient distributed protocol to find a subset of connected sensor nodes to cover the queried region. Each node determines whether to be a sensing node to sense the queried region according to its priority, which is represented by the remaining power or sensing area within the queried region. The proposed protocol can efficiently construct a subset of connected sensing nodes and respond the query request to the sink node. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol is more efficient and has a lower communication overhead than the existing protocol. © 2005 IEEE.