Wireless Sensor node selection strategies for effective surveillance

One of the most prominent applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is for the purpose of surveillance. Here, a number of sensor nodes are deployed to monitor a particular area. But these sensors run on limited battery capacity and are also costly. Thus, the sensor node selection technique needs to be optimized so that using minimum number of sensors, maximum possible area can be covered so that the energy is used efficiently and the power consumption is reduced. This paper reviews three existing algorithms: minimax, lexicographic minimax and greedy forward. It also introduces a new algorithm, maximum coverage area algorithm and compares its performance with the three existing algorithms for optimized selection. Performance comparison in terms of coverage ratio has been made between the four algorithms. Coverage ratio is the measure of the area effectively covered with respect to the total area. According to the simulation results, the maximum coverage area algorithm outperforms minimax, lexicographic minimax and greedy forward algorithms.