Coverage characteristics of symmetric topologies for pervasive sensor networks

The success of pervasive computing environments comprising ubiquitous loco-dynamic sensing devices is very dependent upon the coverage characteristics (CCs) of the network topology. These characteristics include blanket coverage, network density, affects on surrounding environments and intra-sensor coverage overlaps. This paper presents a systematic mathematical model to quantitatively investigate the effects of CCs and provides a comparison with other well used topologies e.g. hexagonal, triangular and square grid. The paper uses connectivity, density saturation, conflict regions and effectiveness of the topology as quality parameters in simulation studies for a disaster recovery network in various irregular terrains. Numerical as well as simulation results confirm the improved performance of hexagonal topology (HT) in terms of the above mentioned quality parameters which can be used to tune the network design to ensure the required QoS throughout the life of the network.