Position and hop-count assisted full coverage control in dense sensor networks

Abstract

In recent years, wireless sensor networks (WSN's) have gained much attention due to its various applications in military, environmental monitoring, industries and in many others. All these applications require some target field to be monitored by a group of sensor nodes. Hence, coverage becomes an important issue in WSN's. This paper focuses on full coverage issue of WSN's. Based on the idea of some existing and derived theorems, Position and Hop-count Assisted (PHA) algorithm is proposed. This algorithm provides full coverage of the target field, maintains network connectivity and tries to minimize the number of working sensor nodes. Algorithm works for communication range less than root three times of sensing range and it can be extended for arbitrary relation between communication range and sensing range. By using hop-count value, three-connectivity in the network is maintained. Also, neighbors information is used to create logical tree structure which can be utilized in routing, redundant data removal and in other areas. Simulation results show that PHA algorithm outperforms layered diffusion-based coverage control algorithm by providing better area coverage and activating fewer nodes.