Multi-covered path in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

The progress of development on sensor networks has inspired many new applications. Some of these applications require the target to be observed by more than one sensors simultaneously. Sensor coverage, which reflects how well a sensor network is monitored by sensors, is an important measure for the quality of service (QoS) that a sensor network can provide. In this paper, we addressed the coverage problem from two different view points and referred to them as the worst-case and best-case coverage problems. Most existing works on these two problems assumed that the coverage degree is one (i.e. the target area falls within the sensing range of at least one sensor). In this paper, we address the k-coverage problem, where the coverage degree is a user-defined parameter k. This is a generalization of the earlier work where only k=1 is assumed. By combining geometric and algorithmic techniques, we establish optimal algorithms to solve the two variants of the k-coverage problem in polynomial time. An important extension of our study on the k-coverage problem was also proposed: the distributed algorithm for the problem. This helps in applying the proposed algorithm under more practical scenarios.