On Surveillance Quality of Sensor Networks with Faulty Sensor Nodes

In this paper we explore the impact of faulty sensor nodes on quality of surveillance. The faulty behavior of sensor nodes may result from several situations, such as malfunctions due to low-cost hardware, environmental interference, or battery depletion. Two major fault models of sensor nodes including false alarm and detection miss are addressed. To enhance the quality of surveillance, a data aggregation scheme is employed to increase the credibility of the sensing reports. Because the energy resource on sensor nodes is scarce, how to determine the degree of data aggregation to achieve the desirable quality, while the overall system lifetime can be prolonged, is an important issue. We define the quality of surveillance considering the system false alarm and the system detection miss to provide a deployment strategy for surveillance. Furthermore, the improvement of the data aggregation scheme and the related metrics on quality of surveillance are analyzed through simulations.