Breach path to target area detection reliability in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) deployed for surveillance tasks are sometimes required to detect unauthorized traversal of intruders from outside the WSN area to an internal area of interest. When network nodes are subject to random failure, it becomes important to estimate the likelihood of successfully detecting and reporting an intrusion event to the sink node. To serve this purpose, we formalize the breach path to target area reliability (BPTA-REL) problem. We devise efficient methods to derive lower and upper bounds on the exact solution. Our approach is based on developing efficient algorithms for generating network pathsets and cutsets for the problem. Next, we present simulation results that illustrate the effectiveness of the obtained bounds as well as their potential use in tackling related design problems.