Optimized barrier location for barrier coverage in mobile sensor networks

Barrier coverage is an important application of sensor networks. This paper studies how to build a strong barrier with mobile sensors in which the maximum moving distance of sensors is minimized. Our work differs from others in the way the y-coordinate of the barrier is determined. We optimize the y-coordinate of the barrier instead of fixing it a priori. An efficient algorithm is proposed, in which the search space of the y-coordinate of the barrier is first discretized and then searched over iteratively. In the theoretical worst case, O(N⁴) iterations may be needed to find the optimal barrier location, where N is the number of sensors, but in practice, our algorithm requires less than O(N²) iterations, as confirmed in simulation.