Efficient Coverage Maintenance Based on Probabilistic Distributed Detection

—Many wireless sensor networks require sufficient sensing coverage over long periods of time. To conserve energy, a coverage maintenance protocol achieves desired coverage by activating only a subset of nodes, while allowing the others to sleep. Existing coverage maintenance protocols are often designed based on simplistic sensing models that do not capture the stochastic nature of distributed sensing. We propose a new sensing coverage model based on the distributed detection theory, which captures two important characteristics of sensor networks, i.e., probabilistic detection by individual sensors and data fusion among sensors. We then present three coverage maintenance protocols that can meet the specified event detection probability and false alarm rate. The centralized protocol only activates a small number of sensors, but introduces extremely long coverage configuration delay. The SeGrid protocol reduces the configuration time by dividing the network into separate fusion groups,...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TMC
• Authors: Guoliang Xing, Xiangmao Chang, Chenyang Lu, Jianping Wang, Ke Shen, Robert Pless, Joseph A. O'Sullivan
• Keywords: Coverage Maintenance Protocols, Sensor Networks, Sensors, TMC 2010