Probabilistic Target Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

The coverage problems have been studied in the recent years, most of them with limited detection capability therefore some pivotal sensors consume energy rapidly and there exist a large amount of partially unused sensors when the network lifetime terminated. We introduce an M-M (multiple sensors to multiple targets) probabilistic target coverage problem and its service solution for the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in this paper to improve the utilization of randomly deployed sensors and to maximize the network lifetime as well. The intention of the M-M probabilistic target coverage problem is to detect/cover multiple targets by multiple sensors cooperatively and simultaneously, where each target is given a realistic detection probability threshold. We designed a heuristic algorithm to solve this problem. Simulation results show that the resulting network lifetime of our algorithm are longer than the target coverage approach, and our algorithm is more appropriate for the demand of the different observed target importance.