Sensor Allocation in Diverse Environments

Sensor coverage varies with location due to factors such as weather, terrain, and obstacles. If a field can be partitioned into zones of homogeneous sensing areas, then coverage by a random deployment of sensors can be optimized by controlling the number of sensors deployed in each zone. We derive expressions to directly calculate the optimal sensor partition in runtime asymptotically equal to the number of zones. We further derive expressions to determine the minimum sensor count required to achieve a specific coverage threshold. We bound the maximum increase in coverage over a strategy oblivious to differences in sensing areas, which our results show is no greater than 13% for a field with two zones. While the analytical solutions assume that each zone is covered independently, we allow sensors to affect neighboring zones in simulations. Nevertheless, the simulations support the optimality of our solution.

[1]  Peter Braß Bounds on coverage and target detection capabilities for models of networks of mobile sensors , 2007, TOSN.

[2]  B. Ripley,et al.  Introduction to the Theory of Coverage Processes. , 1989 .

[3]  R. Srikant,et al.  Unreliable sensor grids: coverage, connectivity and diameter , 2005, Ad Hoc Networks.

[4]  Donald F. Towsley,et al.  A study of the coverage of large-scale sensor networks , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems (IEEE Cat. No.04EX975).

[5]  Ovidiu Daescu,et al.  A New Modeling for Finding Optimal Weighted Distances , 2008, 2008 International Conference on Biocomputation, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Technologies.

[6]  Krishnendu Chakrabarty,et al.  Uncertainty-aware and coverage-oriented deployment for sensor networks , 2004, J. Parallel Distributed Comput..

[7]  Amotz Bar-Noy,et al.  Application of halftoning algorithms to location dependent sensor placement , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[8]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Habitat monitoring with sensor networks , 2004, CACM.

[9]  Zhiming Ma,et al.  Coverage Problem of Wireless Sensor Networks , 2005, CJCDGCGT.

[10]  Dario Pompili,et al.  Three-dimensional and two-dimensional deployment analysis for underwater acoustic sensor networks , 2009, Ad Hoc Networks.

[11]  Theodore Brown,et al.  Location dependent heuristics for sensor coverage planning , 2008, SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing.

[12]  Krishnendu Chakrabarty,et al.  Sensor placement for effective coverage and surveillance in distributed sensor networks , 2003, 2003 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking, 2003. WCNC 2003..

[13]  Jeff Frolik,et al.  Effects of natural propagation environments on wireless sensor network coverage area , 2003, Proceedings of the 35th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, 2003..

[14]  Xiaohua Jia,et al.  Data fusion improves the coverage of wireless sensor networks , 2009, MobiCom '09.

[15]  Radha Poovendran,et al.  Stochastic coverage in heterogeneous sensor networks , 2006, TOSN.