Irregular Sensing Range Detection Model for Coverage Based Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

In order to optimize the performance of wireless sensor networks, based on the boolean sensing model (BSM) many coverage preserving protocols have been proposed; however, BSM model is too idealistic to be maintained in many applications. Sensing range could be changed by environment factors such as the obstacle and weather condition. BSM based protocols can not achieve their design goals because of the errors of coverage measurement. In this paper, we proposed our irregular sensing range detection model (RDM) which solves the range detection problem through estimating the sensing range by a revised alpha-shape algorithm. A RDM based distributed algorithm for measuring the area coverage is proposed. Its complexity are analyzed and compared to the centralized alpha-shape based area coverage algorithm. A set of simulation experiments is carried out to evaluate the performance of our algorithm in terms of coverage accuracy, coverage error and complexity. The result shows that the boolean sensing model will lead to errors when obstacles are injected into environment; however, our range detection model can detect the changes of environments and help protocols adapt to it.