Coverage Control in Sensor Networks

The advances in sensor design have decreased the size, weight, and cost of sensors by orders of magnitude, yet with the increase of higher spatial and temporal re- lution and accuracy. With the fast progress of sensors design and communications technique, sensor networks have also been quickly evolving in both research and practical domains in the last decade. More and more sensor networks have been - ployed in real-world to gather information for our daily life. Applications of sensor networks can be found in battle?eld surveillance, environmental monitoring, b- logical detection, smart spaces, industrial diagnostics, etc. Although the technique of sensor networks has a very promising future, many challenges are still deserving lots of research efforts for its successful applications. Thisbookisdevotedtocoveragecontrol,oneofthemostfundamentalandimportant research issues in sensor networks. The aim of the book is to provide tutorial-like and up-to-date reference resources on various coverage control problems in sensor networks, a hot topic that has been intensively researched in recent years. Due to some unique characteristics of sensor networks such as energy constraint and - hoc topology, the coverage problems in sensor networks have many new scenarios and features that entitle them an important research issue in recent years. I have done my best to include in the book the most recent advances, techniques, protocols, results, and ?ndings in this ?eld.

Advances in sensor technology have yielded sensors with ever-increasing accuracy and higher spatial and temporal resolution―while their size, weight, and cost have decreased by many orders of magnitude. Sensor networks have been developing at a similarly rapid pace, with more and more real-world deployments for various applications.

This easy-to-read text focuses on challenges in coverage control―how to efficiently control individual sensors’ sensing unit to achieve network-wide coverage quality. As one of the most fundamental and important research issues in sensor networks, coverage control problems have been intensively studied in recent years.

Divided into four parts, this book opens with a general introduction, before presenting three categories of coverage control problems―point coverage, area coverage and barrier coverage―in the following parts. Employing a tutorial-like style, this book examines the fundamental coverage problems in each category and presentsthe most recent advances and techniques in the field.

Topics and features:

• Provides an introduction to sensors, sensor nodes, sensor networks, and sensor coverage models

• Supplies an informal definition and taxonomy for network-wide coverage control

• Explores the node placement optimization problem for coverage configuration before network deployment

• Investigates the coverage lifetime maximization problem by controlling coverage characteristics in a randomly deployed network

• Discusses the critical sensor-density problem for coverage configuration before network deployment

• Examines the sensor-activity scheduling problem of controlling network coverage characteristics in a randomly deployed network

• Introduces the node movement strategy problem for sensor networks containing mobile nodes

• Presents the challenges of building intrusion barriers and finding penetration paths

This useful text/reference for graduate students provides an overview of various coverage-control problems in sensor networks. The problem scenarios, solution techniques, and protocols presented in the text will also be of interest to researchers, developers and professionals.

Dr. Bang Wang is a researcher in the Intelligent Systems Center in Singapore, an applied research center jointly set up by Singapore Technologies Engineering and Nanyang Technological University.