Coverage Verification without Location Information

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently emerged as a prominent technology for environmental monitoring and hazardous event detection. Yet, their success depends considerably on their ability to ensure reliable event detection. Such guarantees can be provided only if the target field monitored by a WSN does not contain coverage holes that are not monitored by any sensor. Currently, the coverage hole detection solutions require accurate knowledge of the sensors locations, which cannot be easily obtained, or they cannot provide guarantees on the coverage quality. In this study, we address the challenge of designing an accurate k-coverage verification scheme, without using location information, for a predefined k ≥ 1. To this end, we present two efficient, distributed, and localized k-coverage verification schemes with proven guarantees on their coverage detection quality. Our simulations show that the schemes accurately detect coverage holes of various sizes.