Analysis for Heterogeneous Coverage Problem in Multimedia Sensor Networks

Multimedia sensor networks (MSNs), which allow capturing acoustic and visual information, provide an unprecedented opportunity for variety of applications. This paper investigates the heterogeneous coverage problem in MSNs, i.e., how many multimedia sensors should be deployed to guarantee that each point in the monitored region is covered by multiple types of heterogeneous sensors. It is different from the coverage problem in conventional homogeneous sensor networks, mainly because that it is based on a heterogeneous sensing model, which is a hybrid of the omni-sensing model and the directional-sensing model. We propose a mathematical model to describe the relationships among the number of multimedia sensors, the sensing radius of the acoustic collection module, the sensing radius and the sensing angle of the visual collection module and the heterogeneous coverage rate. Our simulation results show that deploying our model in practical scenarios is effective.