VISA: Virtual Scanning Algorithm for Dynamic Protection of Road Networks

This paper proposes a virtual scanning algorithm (VISA), tailored and optimized for road network surveillance. Our design uniquely leverages upon the facts that (i) the movement of targets (e.g., vehicles) is confined within roadways and (ii) the road network maps are normally known. We guarantee the detection of moving targets before they reach designated protection points (such as temporary base camps), while maximizing the lifetime of the sensor network. The main idea of this work is virtual scan - waves of sensing activities scheduled for road network protection. We provide design-space analysis on the performance of virtual scan in terms of lifetime and average detection delay. Importantly, to our knowledge, this is the first work to study how to guarantee target detection while sensor network deteriorates, using a novel hole handling technique. Through theoretical analysis and extensive simulation, it is shown that a surveillance system, using our design, sustains orders-of-magnitude longer lifetime than full coverage algorithms, and as much as ten times longer than legacy duty cycling algorithms.