Coverage problems in wireless ad-hoc sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless ad-hoc sensor networks have recently emerged as a premier research topic. They have great long-term economic potential, ability to transform our lives, and pose many new system-building challenges. Sensor networks also pose a number of new conceptual and optimization problems. Some, such as location, deployment, and tracking, are fundamental issues, in that many applications rely on them for needed information. We address one of the fundamental problems, namely coverage. Coverage in general, answers the questions about quality of service (surveillance) that can be provided by a particular sensor network. We first define the coverage problem from several points of view including deterministic, statistical, worst and best case, and present examples in each domain. By combining the computational geometry and graph theoretic techniques, specifically the Voronoi diagram and graph search algorithms, we establish the main highlight of the paper-optimal polynomial time worst and average case algorithm for coverage calculation. We also present comprehensive experimental results and discuss future research directions related to coverage in sensor networks.