Coverage for target localization in wireless sensor networks

Target tracking and localization are important applications in wireless sensor networks. Although the coverage problem for target detection has been intensively studied, few consider the coverage problem from the perspective of target localization. In this paper, we propose two methods to estimate the lower bound of sensor density to guarantee a bounded localization error over the sensing field. We first convert the coverage problem for localization to a conventional disk coverage problem, where the sensing area is a disk centered at the sensor. Our results show that the disk coverage model requires 4 times more sensors for localization compared to detection applications. We then introduce the idea of sector coverage to tighten the lower bound. The lower bound derived through sector coverage is 2 times less than through disk coverage. A distributed sector coverage algorithm is then proposed in this paper. Compared to disk coverage, sector coverage requires more computations. However, it provides more accurate density estimations than the disk model. Numerical evaluations show that the density bound derived through our sector coverage model is tight.