Assessment of Different Algorithms to Solve the Set-Covering Problem in a Relay Selection Technique

The use of adequate relay selection techniques is crucial to improve the behavior of cooperation based approaches in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). The Optimized Relay Selection Technique (ORST) is a relay selection technique that may be reduced to the application on classic set-covering problem (SCP) to WSN. The SCP seeks to find a minimum number of sets that contain all elements of all data sets. The SCP can be solved with different types of algorithms. This paper assesses the performance and quality of three different algorithms to solve the SCP generated by the previously proposed ORST technique, considering performance metrics relevant within WSNs context. The analysis was performed by simulation using the OMNeT++ tool and the WSN framework Castalia. The simulation results show that the branch and bound algorithm excels when compared to other state-of-the-art approaches.