Finding Barriers with Minimum Number of Sensors in Wireless Sensor Networks

It is one of the major application categories for wireless sensor networks to detect intruders entering protected areas. Early research has studied the problem of barrier coverage for intruder detections. However, it is an open problem to set up the sensor barriers with the minimum number of sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks. It is a critically important problem, and its solution can be widely utilized in the sensor barrier deployment. In this paper, we present a complete solution to this minimum-node barrier coverage problem. Our algorithm works in an asynchronous and distributed fashion for protected areas of any size and any shape. In our algorithm, each node is only required to communicate to its neighbors and is not necessary to be homogeneous or to know its location. For a deployment of n sensors, the new approach has O(n²log(n)) message and time complexities. Our algorithm is the first and the best to provide a distributed solution to the minimum-node barrier coverage problem in asynchronous wireless sensor networks.