Impact of Interference on Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

The quality of surveillance is dependent on the sensing coverage of a wireless sensor network. In the present paper, we examine how interference affects the coverage of a wireless sensor network. The coverage fraction and required number of sensors for randomly deployed and well-planned deployed wireless sensor networks in the presence of interferers are computed. The required number of sensors to achieve higher level of coverage increases drastically for randomly distributed sensor nodes where the interference effect is high. In the case of well-planned distributed sensor network, required sensors increases linearly as interference effects become more pronounced. Algorithms for computing the required number of sensors to obtain the desired level of coverage in the presence of non-uniform interference is presented. The simulation results suggest that the coverage per subregion and coverage per sensor approaches towards, the improvement achieved is constant. The sensor saving ratio is independent of the level of the desired coverage provided the coverage per subregion is larger than or equal to the coverage per sensor.