Voronoi-based coverage improvement approach for wireless directional sensor networks

Differing from general omnidirectional wireless sensor networks, in the directional sensor networks, the effective sensing range of sensors is characterized by directionality and sensing angle. Therefore, there are dissimilar conditions for the discussion and research on the sensing coverage of directional sensor networks. This study used the characteristics of Voronoi diagram and direction-adjustable directional sensors to propose a distributed greedy algorithm, which can improve the effective field coverage of directional sensor networks. The sensor field is divided into Voronoi cells by the calculation of sensors, and the sensor working direction is evaluated based on Voronoi vertices. Considering the coverage contribution of convex polygonal cell of sensors and the coverage overlap of direction select between neighbor sensors, the working direction is adjusted and controlled, so as to improve the overall sensing field coverage ratio in the sensor network environment without global information. This study used simulation to change various parameters, such as the number of sensors, angle of view, and sensing radius, in the directional sensor network field to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, and further analyzed and compared the improvement results of the overall sensing field coverage ratio. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.