Critical density thresholds for coverage in wireless sensor networks

Sensor networks are deployed to monitor the physical world and to provide relevant data to the users. An important question in such networks is to estimate the number of sensors required to achieve complete coverage of the desired region. The number of sensors required would depend upon the physical characteristics of the individual sensors as well as the nature of the target. In this paper, we address the problem of finding the critical density of sensors for complete coverage. We use an exposure-based model to find the number of sensors required to cover an area for given sensor and target characteristics. The accuracy of the results is established via simulations.