On the Connected k-Coverage Problem in Heterogeneous Sensor Nets: The Curse of Randomness and Heterogeneity

Coverage is an essential task in sensor deployment for the design of wireless sensor networks. While most existing studies on coverage consider homogeneous sensors, the deployment of heterogeneous sensors represents more accurately the network design for real-world applications. In this paper, we focus on the problem of connected k-coverage in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. Precisely, we distinguish two deployment strategies, where heterogeneous sensors are either randomly or pseudo-randomly distributed in a field. While the first deployment approach considers a single layer of heterogeneous sensors, the second one proposes a multi-tier architecture of heterogeneous sensors to better address the problems introduced by pure randomness and heterogeneity.