Extending the lifetime of barrier coverage by adding sensors to a bottleneck region

One important application of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is intruder detection for protection of a region of interest, and k-barrier coverage is a good way to achieve the necessary level of security using WSNs. One of the biggest problems with WSNs is their limited lifetime, which is directly related to the deployment and maintenance costs, and many approaches have been proposed to improve network lifetime. In this paper, a new approach to extending network lifetime through strategic deployment of additional sensors is presented. We propose two strategies for deployment of additional sensors: random and targeted. We also analyze their performance through extensive simulation. The key concept for the targeted additional sensor deployment is minimal bottleneck, which limits the network lifetime. We develop an algorithm for finding a bottleneck for 1-barrier coverage. We apply the strategies for deployment of additional sensors to a WSN initially randomly deployed. The targeted additional sensor deployment strategy extends the network lifetime 24% on average with only additional 1.4% of the initial randomly deployed sensors added to the WSN.