Coverage enhancement with rotatable sensors in Wireless Video Sensor Networks for post-disaster management

Abstract

Wireless Video Sensor Networks (WVSNs) have recently emerged as a new type of sensor networks in which large amounts of data are sensed and processed in real-time. This kind of networks is envisioned to be deployed in the physical environment to monitor a wide variety of real-world phenomena such as surveillance, monitoring and disaster recovery. In this work we propose a model of WVSN for post-disaster management in order to assist rescue operations by locating survivors, identifying risky areas and making the rescue crew more aware of the overall situation. To build an overview of the environment and to assess the current situation, we have used rotatable video sensors functionalities, which can switch to the best direction to get high coverage. After these video sensors are randomly deployed, each sensor calculates its next new direction to switch in order to obtain a better coverage than previous one. To address fault tolerance in WVSN in case of damages caused by disasters, we used redundant video nodes to construct different cover sets composed of video sensors that can cover the failed video node's Field of View. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our scheme in terms of coverage enhancement and fault tolerance.