On Critical Density for Coverage and Connectivity in Directional Sensor Network Using Continuum Percolation

Sensing coverage in wireless sensor network is one of the vital performance metrics which can arise in all design stages and usually considered together with some other performance metrics, such as connectivity or energy consumption. Whatever the metrics, the fundamental problem is to know at least how many sensors are needed to maintain both sensing coverage and network connectivity. In this paper, we proposed a percolation-based coverage & connectivity combined model (PCCC) to obtain the critical density at which the network abruptly becomes covered/connected. The PCCC is based on directional sensor network in which sensors are assigned a determined sense direction with the angular interval varies from 0 to 2π. Besides, we also discussed the coverage and connectivity together as a whole under the model proposed. It is worth mentioning that the theoretical analysis as well as simulation results of relationship between critical density and transmitting gives insights into the practical design of directional sensor network.