The Coverage Problem in a Wireless Sensor Network

One fundamental issue in sensor networks is the coverage problem, which reflects how well a sensor network is monitored or tracked by sensors. In this paper, we formulate this problem as a decision problem, whose goal is to determine whether every point in the service area of the sensor network is covered by at least k sensors, where k is a predefined value. The sensing ranges of sensors can be unit disks or non-unit disks. We present polynomial-time algorithms, in terms of the number of sensors, that can be easily translated to distributed protocols. The result is a generalization of some earlier results where only k=1 is assumed. Applications of the result include: (i) positioning applications, (ii) situations which require stronger environmental monitoring capability, and (iii) scenarios which impose more stringent fault-tolerant capability.

[1]  Wendi Heinzelman,et al.  Energy-efficient communication protocol for wireless microsensor networks , 2000, Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[2]  Miodrag Potkonjak,et al.  Coverage problems in wireless ad-hoc sensor networks , 2001, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2001. Conference on Computer Communications. Twentieth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Society (Cat. No.01CH37213).

[3]  Nathan Ickes,et al.  Physical layer driven protocol and algorithm design for energy-efficient wireless sensor networks , 2001, MobiCom '01.

[4]  Gregory J. Pottie,et al.  Wireless integrated network sensors , 2000, Commun. ACM.

[5]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Rumor routing algorthim for sensor networks , 2002, WSNA '02.

[6]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  GPS-less low-cost outdoor localization for very small devices , 2000, IEEE Wirel. Commun..

[7]  Di Tian,et al.  A coverage-preserving node scheduling scheme for large wireless sensor networks , 2002, WSNA '02.

[8]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Rumor Routing Algorithm For Sensor Networks , 2002 .

[9]  David E. Culler,et al.  A transmission control scheme for media access in sensor networks , 2001, MobiCom '01.

[10]  Micha Sharir,et al.  Arrangements and Their Applications , 2000, Handbook of Computational Geometry.

[11]  Guoliang Xing,et al.  Integrated coverage and connectivity configuration in wireless sensor networks , 2003, SenSys '03.

[12]  Miodrag Potkonjak,et al.  Power efficient organization of wireless sensor networks , 2001, ICC 2001. IEEE International Conference on Communications. Conference Record (Cat. No.01CH37240).

[13]  B. R. Badrinath,et al.  Ad hoc positioning system (APS) using AOA , 2003, IEEE INFOCOM 2003. Twenty-second Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37428).

[14]  Miodrag Potkonjak,et al.  Exposure in wireless Ad-Hoc sensor networks , 2001, MobiCom '01.

[15]  Miodrag Potkonjak,et al.  Minimal and maximal exposure path algorithms for wireless embedded sensor networks , 2003, SenSys '03.

[16]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Highly-resilient, energy-efficient multipath routing in wireless sensor networks , 2001, MOCO.

[17]  Songwu Lu,et al.  PEAS: a robust energy conserving protocol for long-lived sensor networks , 2002, 10th IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, 2002. Proceedings..

[18]  Joseph O'Rourke.  Computational geometry column 15 , 1992, Int. J. Comput. Geom. Appl..

[19]  Gregory J. Pottie,et al.  Protocols for self-organization of a wireless sensor network , 2000, IEEE Wirel. Commun..

[20]  Paramvir Bahl,et al.  RADAR: an in-building RF-based user location and tracking system , 2000, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2000. Conference on Computer Communications. Nineteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (Cat. No.00CH37064).

[21]  Miodrag Potkonjak,et al.  Localized algorithms in wireless ad-hoc networks: location discovery and sensor exposure , 2001, MobiHoc '01.

[22]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  An energy-efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks , 2002, Proceedings.Twenty-First Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies.

[23]  Gert Vegter,et al.  In handbook of discrete and computational geometry , 1997 .

[24]  Mani B. Srivastava,et al.  Dynamic fine-grained localization in Ad-Hoc networks of sensors , 2001, MobiCom '01.

[25]  Yu-Chee Tseng,et al.  Location Tracking in a Wireless Sensor Network by Mobile Agents and Its Data Fusion Strategies , 2003, Comput. J..