Active Sensor Network Deployment and Coverage Enhancement using Circle Packings

This paper presents a novel algorithm for autonomous deployment of active sensor networks. The algorithm aims to enhance the sensing coverage based on an initial placement of sensor nodes. The sensing regions are modeled as circular discs of variable sensing range limits. The problem of placing these circular discs to cover a field is intuitively transformed to the circle packing problem: given the specified combinatorics of tangency patterns of n circles, find the label R denoting the radii of these circles. Base on the fact that a unique circle packing exists satisfying any given set of combinatorics and boundary conditions of a sensor network, we can always find the minimum sensing range required for every interior nodes to fulfill such packing conditions. Though an extension from tangency packing to overlap packing, the interstices among triples (which represent coverage holes) can be eliminated. Based on a number of numerical simulations, we have verified that the proposed algorithm always yields sensor deployments of wide coverage and minimize the sensing ranges required for every interior sensing node to satisfy the packing and boundary conditions.