Application of halftoning algorithms to location dependent sensor placement

We consider a sensor network placement problem where the sensing range of a sensor depends on its location in order to model the effect of terrain features. We study how sensors should be placed in order to maximize the coverage and illustrate how digital halftoning algorithms from the field of image processing can be useful in this respect. In particular, we reduce the sensor placement problem to a corresponding image halftoning problem and then apply two well known halftoning algorithms to the problem: dither mask halftoning and direct binary search. We illustrate our approach with experimental results and show that this approach is also applicable to the problem of preferential coverage.