NeTS: Small: Connected Coverage of Wireless Sensor Networks in Theoretical and Practical Settings

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Deployment is a fundamental issue in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In many missions today, sensors are deployed deterministically in a planned manner. Instances include airport/harbor monitoring, intruder tracking on government property, etc. This project studies optimal deployment patterns in WSNs, which are those patterns that achieve desired coverage and connectivity requirements with the fewest sensor nodes. Knowledge of these patterns can help avoid ad hoc deployment to save costs, minimize message collisions, improve network management, etc. However, exploration of these patterns is difficult and far from mature in WSNs. This project comprehensively studies them in both theoretical and practical settings for WSNs in 2- and 3-dimensional spaces. Three major research tasks are carried out: (1) exploring optimal deployment patterns for 1-coverage and k-connectivity in 2-dimensional space; (2) exploring such patterns for connected m-coverage (m 1) in 2-dimensional space; (3) exploring such patterns for connected coverage in 3-dimensional space. If successful, this project will result in a set of optimal deployment patterns in theoretical and practical settings to achieve multi-coverage and multi-connectivity in 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional spaces with different ratios of sensor communication range to sensing range. The research can help establish theoretical foundations and practical guidelines for planned deployment not just for WSNs, but also for other wireless networks, such as mesh and cellular networks. In addition, the research results will broaden understanding of applications of computational geometry and topology in computer networks.