Coverage analysis and active scheme of wireless sensor networks

Coverage is regarded as one of the important quality of service merits of a wireless sensor network (WSN) to evaluate its monitoring capability. In this study, the authors develop a novel quantitative method to evaluate the quality of coverage of sensors. Deployment entropy is introduced to measure non-uniformity in sensor coverage, which could reveal the quality of sensor deployment without considering the sensing region of the sensors. Moreover, the authors develop a scheme of activating pre-deployed sensors based on the result of deployment entropy, which is to activate additional pre-deployed sensors in keeping with the tendency of increasing the deployment entropy. The simulation results show that it can improve the sensing coverage with less active sensors than the other sensor placement method.