A survey on area coverage in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

In recent years, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have gained much attention because of its varying applications from catastrophic region to industrial and household region. In few applications, sensors are deployed in extreme environmental conditions. Hence, node access is not possible in that scenario. Therefore, a large number of sensor nodes are deployed in the target field so that node replacement problem is eliminated. Also, coverage is a very important parameter because it measures how effectively a target field is monitored by the sensor network. This paper focuses on the coverage issue in wireless sensor networks. Initially, three different types of coverage issues are discussed. Then, full coverage issue is examined by considering different points such as node type, deployment type, relation of communication range to sensing range, strategy used to detect full coverage and positioning based/independent algorithms. Some applications of wireless sensor networks are given. Finally, research challenges in the field of area coverage are discussed.