A Wireless Array Based Cooperative Sensing Model in Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor network (WSN), the performance and effectiveness of the network is highly dependant on its geographical coverage. However, in many applications the actual coverage cannot be guaranteed to meet the requirement due to the random sensor deployment. While existing methods tend to exploit mobility to relocate all the sensors to be evenly distributed, a wireless array-based cooperative sensing model (WA-CSM) that makes use of a wireless group of densely located nodes, namely wireless array (WA), is proposed in this paper to improve the initial network coverage. A distributed WA formation algorithm is derived to group together the overly clustered nodes to jointly sense the environment without moving them apart. In addition, the nodes that are located within the cooperative sensing range of other WA's are identified as redundant nodes. As a result, a better coverage can be achieved with less number of active nodes being involved in the network operation. The effectiveness of the proposed approach, in comparison with the traditional Boolean sensing model (BSM), is demonstrated by computer simulation studies.