Coordinated Sensing Coverage in Sensor Networks using Distributed Reinforcement Learning

This research was supported by a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship within the 6th European Community Framework Programme. The authors would like to thank Jan Sacha for an implementation of CRL in Java on which the experiments in this paper are based.

Notice of Violation of IEEE Publication Principles Critical Density for Coverage and Connectivity in Two-Dimensional Aligned-Orientation Directional Sensor Networks Using Continuum Percolation, by Mohammad Khanjary, Masoud Sabaei, and Mohammad Reza Meybodi in IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 14, no. 8, pp. 2856-2863, Aug. 2014 After careful and considered review of the content and authorship of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE's Publication Principles. This paper contains significant portions of original text from the paper cited below. The original text was copied without attribution (including appropriate references to the original author(s) and/or paper title) and without permission. Integrated Coverage and Connectivity in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Two-Dimensional Percolation Problem, by H. M. Ammari and S. K. Das, in IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 57, no. 10, pp. 1423-1434, Oct. 2008 Sensing coverage is one of the fundamental design issues in wireless sensor networks, which reflects the surveillance quality provided by them. Moreover, network connectivity enables the gathered data by sensors to reach to the sink node. Given an initially uncovered field, and as more and more directional sensors are continuously added to the sensor network, the size of partial covered areas increases. At some point, the situation abruptly changes from small fragmented covered areas to a single large covered area. We call this abrupt change the sensing-coverage phase transition (SCPT). Likewise, given an originally disconnected sensor network, as more and more sensors are added, the number of connected components changes such that the sensor network suddenly becomes connected at some point. We call this sudden change the network connectivity phase transition (NCPT). The nature of such phase transitions is a central topic in the percolation theory. In this paper, we introduce aligned-orientation directional sensor networks in which nodes are deployed based on Poisson point process and the orientation of all sensor nodes is the same. Then, we propose an approach to compute density of nodes at critical percolation for both of the SCPT and NCPT problems in such networks, for all angles of field-of-view between 0 and π by using continuum percolation. Due to percolation theory, the critical density is infimum density that for densities above it SCPT and NCPT almost surely occur. In addition, we propose a model for percolation in directional sensor networks, which provides a basis for solving the SCPT and NCPT problems together.

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the 3rd ACM Workshop on Security of Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks (SASN'05), held in conjunction with the 12th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'05), November 7, 2005, in Alexandria, Virginia.This year we received a total of 39 submissions on various aspects of ad-hoc and sensor network security. The program committee selected 6 as regular papers that cover a variety of topics, including trust establishment in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs), security of vehicular ad-hoc networks, secure group communication, key pre-distribution for sensor networks, jamming attacks against sensor network MAC protocols, and defense against Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. This year we continue the tradition of SASN'03 and SASN'04 to encourage the presentation and discussion of work-in-progress on ad-hoc and sensor network security. Among the 39 submissions, the program committee selected 7 papers to present in work-in-progress sessions, covering topics on anonymous routing for MANETs, key distribution for inter-group multicast in ad-hoc networks, improved topology assumptions for threshold cryptography in MANETs, RFID security, tracing in mobile wireless sensor networks, time synchronization attacks in sensor networks, and coordinated deployment for improving secure communications and sensing coverage in wireless sensor networks. In addition, the program includes a panel on Advances in Sensor and Ad-hoc Network Security and an invited keynote talk by Radha Poovandran (University of Washington) on Information Assurance in MANETs and Wireless Sensor Networks. We hope that these proceedings will serve as a valuable reference for security researchers and developers.

Toward the end of the 20th century, the Internet has been able to provide a large number of users with the ability to move diverse forms of information readily and thus has revolutionized business, industry, defense, science, education, research, and human interactions. In the last 10 years, sensor networking combines the technology of modern microelectronic sensors, embedded computational processing systems, and modern computer networking methodology. It is believed that sensor networking in the 21st century will be equally significant by providing measurement of the spatial-temporal physical phenomena around us, leading to a better understanding and utilization of this information in a wide range of applications. Sensor networking will be able to bring a finer-grained and fuller measurement and characterization of the world around us to be processed and communicated, so the decision makers can utilize the information to take actions in near-real-time. The potential applications enabled by SNs include security and surveillance, environmental monitoring and control, target detection and tracking, etc. Wireless sensor networks utilize the extensive networking concepts of ad hoc networks and apply them to specific sensor network scenarios. This mini-special issue comprises three papers covering three quiet diverse aspects of wireless sensor networks. The first paper, “Lifetime Maximization Based on Coverage and Connectivity in Wireless Sensor Networks,” is by T. Zhao et al. They studied the problem of network lifetime maximization for QoS specific information retrieval for the reconstruction of a spatially correlated signal field in a wireless sensor network for two wireless transmission cases. In one case, they assumed there exist single-hop transmissions between sensors and the access point, and in the other case, the measurements are sent to the access point through multi-hop transmissions. To address both of these problems, they formulated the problems using integer programming based on the theories of coverage and connectivity in sensor networks and then derived upper bounds for the network lifetime that provides benchmarks for the performance of suboptimal methods. Several lowcomplexity suboptimal algorithms for joint node scheduling and data routing were then proposed to approach the performance upper bounds. The second paper, “Using Heterogeneity to Enhance Random Walk-based Queries,” is by M. Zuniga et al. They presented a study of the impact of heterogeneous node connectivity on random walk-based queries. The main contribution of the work is showing that with a small percentage (e.g., 10%) of high-degree nodes in the network and using a simple distributed push-pull mechanism, significant cost savings can be obtained (e.g., between 30% and 70%) depending on the coverage of the high-degree nodes. Their work provides interesting theoretical results for line topologies showing that when cluster-heads have a coverage of k nodes to the right and left and are uniformly distributed, a fraction of 4/5k J Sign Process Syst (2009) 57:381–383 DOI 10.1007/s11265-009-0377-9

Aiming at the uneven random coverage distribution of wireless sensor networks sensor nodes, the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) is used to optimize the node coverage of wireless sensor networks. To improve the global search capability of SSA, the algorithm is improved and applied to the wireless sensor networks of bridge monitoring. For enhancing the coverage of the wireless sensor networks, this article uses two improved methods. One is to use the good point set theory to make the initial population evenly distributed; another is to introduce a weight factor to speed up its convergence. The experiments have proved the reliability and rationality of the algorithm. The improved algorithm is superior to other meta-heuristic algorithms and provides a new idea for optimizing bridge monitoring wireless sensor networks coverage.

Aiming at the problems of multiple coverage blind areas, poor monitoring quality, and low utilization of sensor network nodes in aviation wireless sensor networks, a discrete cuckoo search (DCS) is proposed, and an objective coverage optimization function is established. Aiming at the fact that the previous cuckoo search is not suitable for discrete values, the binary code conversion formula is used to perform binary code conversion on the jump path of each position update of Levy flight, which makes the algorithm converge faster and avoids the limitations of local search. In the simulation, the discrete cuckoo search was compared with ant colony optimization (ACO) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). Simulation experiment results show that the proposed discrete cuckoo search (DCS) has a great advantage in convergence speed, more targets are detected, and the target coverage in the aerial wireless sensor network is effectively improved.

Solving energy issues for sweep coverage in wireless sensor networks

Minimizing the energy consumption of battery-powered sensors is an essential consideration in sensor network applications like coverage, and sleep/wake scheduling mechanism has been proved to an efficient approach to handling this issue. Nevertheless, the frequent switching between states, during scheduling, leads also to significant energy consumption. In this article, a coverage-guaranteed distributed sleep/wake scheduling scheme is presented with the purpose of prolonging network lifetime while guaranteeing network coverage. Our scheme mitigates scheduling process to be more stable by avoiding useless transitions between states without affecting the coverage level required by the application. The simulation results illustrate that out scheme outperforms some other existed algorithms in terms of coverage guarantee, energy conservation and stability.

Many sensor networks are deployed for the purpose of covering and monitoring a particular region, and detecting the object of interest in the region. In this paper, based on the probabilistic sensing model, we conduct comprehensive analytical and simulation studies on collaborative information coverage and object detection in wireless sensor networks. More specifically, we first define point information coverage and based on that we define p-coverage as a measure of the coverage performance for a randomly-deployed wireless sensor network. Then, we investigate the coverage and object detection performances of several simple decision fusion-based collaborative mechanisms and find that simple collaborations among active sensors indeed degrade the coverage performance due to the requirement of maintaining the target false detection probability. This motivates us to develop an on-demand collaborative framework for object detection, whose effectiveness is supported by detailed theoretical analysis and simulation-based validation. Finally, we investigate the energy efficiency performance of our proposed framework and identify the trade-offs among various system parameters in network power consumption.

A multiobjective optimization coverage control strategy is proposed for solving the contradictory problem among energy consumption, equilibrium of energy, and network coverage in wireless sensor networks. A new evolutionary algorithm named Multiobjective free search algorithm (MOFS) is designed for WSN optimization problem based on fitness functions and binary coding schemes. The proposed strategy is used to estimate the number of active nodes because individual nodes cannot have their working state information readily. Simulation shows that MOFS is effective to solve the typical combinatorial optimization problem, and the coverage control strategy can obtain high network coverage and reduce energy consumption effectively by the reasonable selecting parameters, while equilibrium of energy consumption is also considered.

Wireless sensor networks are a collection of specially designed nodes to provide support to sensor information propagation. Sensor nodes are basically designed to sense data as sensor and distribute to servers for further analysis. Based on the specific requirements, the numbers of sensor nodes can range from hundreds to thousands. All the communication will take place through predefined network characteristics. WSNs generally face energy issues. LEACH is designed for efficient cluster formation. It provides an efficient energy solution for data transmission from node to base station. Various enhanced version of LEACH has been proposed by Assuming LEACH as base protocol. The energy constraints are a critical aspect in developing the routing protocols for WSNs. Designers and researchers have contributed their effort through enhancement in energy saving procedure into WSNs. In this work, the LEACH based protocols and their performance in WSN has been analysed. This research paper evaluates recent advancement in LEACH based approaches for Wireless Wide Area Sensor Network with comparison table.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can be used effectively to form barriers that monitor strips of land for applicaions such as homeland security and critical infrastructure protection. Sensors are highly constrained in their energy usage, so when they harvest energy, it is neccessary that this energy be used effectively. When WSNs are used as barriers, they are typically deployed for extended period of time, so it is of great importance that the network has a long lifetime. The lifetime problem for WSNs has been studied extensively. In this paper we give an exact solution to the problem of achieving maximum lifetime for the application of k-barrier coverage in energy harvesting wireless sensor networks.

In recent times although there is lot of research in field of localization application but very few aims at localization module with optimal energy consumption. Localization, being inevitable for a range of applications, is also a basis for many network operations such as data packet forwarding i.e. routing and sensing coverage in wireless sensor networks. With a range of application scenario, it is a challenging task to design a localization module for a wireless sensor network consisting of sensor nodes with limited capacity in terms of power, processing and storage etc. This paper presents a simple model of a range based localization system that employs distributed computing in a collaborative and cooperative manner. The aim of this work is to modify a range based localization algorithm to utilize scarce resources optimally along with improved performance by changing the inherent methodologies of position estimation. In this research work basically the role of a media access control scheme (MAC) in the localization module is investigated. A MAC is basically used to save the energy by reducing collisions and retransmission of range packets. Further, energy is conserved by restricting the coverage to a smaller part containing the neighbours up to certain hops and that is formed by dividing the whole network area into clusters. To analyse the performance spectrum, we have simulated the localization method under a variety of application scenarios and lead to the conclusion that this approach increases the efficiency of localization in wireless sensor networks. In the simulation process, every minute aspect of sensor network localization model including the topology, range, mobility, channel, propagation schemes etc. were considered and the performance was finally analyzed.

Wireless sensor network (WSN) coverage optimization is a critical factor in improving network service quality, yet it faces challenges such as deployment uniformity, high-dimensional optimization, and the balance between exploration and exploitation under limited node resources. To address the shortcomings of the cultural historical optimization algorithm (CHOA), including insufficient global exploration, lack of dynamic regulation, and limited local exploitation accuracy, this paper proposes a film and television strategy-based multi-strategy cultural historical optimization algorithm (FTSCHOA). The proposed algorithm enhances performance through three synergistic mechanisms: a DE-style evolutionary operator that strengthens global exploration and population diversity; a film-and-television strategy that balances exploration and exploitation via random perturbations and adaptive parameter regulation; and a memory-based neighborhood local search that performs refined exploitation around high-quality solution sets to improve local optimization accuracy. Extensive experiments conducted on the CEC2017 and CEC2022 benchmark suites with dimensions of 10, 20, 30, and 50 demonstrate that FTSCHOA outperforms comparative algorithms in terms of optimization accuracy, convergence speed, and stability. The Friedman mean rank test indicates that FTSCHOA consistently achieves the best average ranking, while the Wilcoxon rank-sum test confirms that its performance differences with respect to competing algorithms are statistically significant (p<0.05). When applied to WSN coverage optimization in a 100 m×100 m monitoring region, FTSCHOA achieves coverage rates of 0.9351 and 0.9738 with 25 and 30 sensor nodes, respectively, which are significantly higher than those obtained by PSO, GWO, CHOA, and other algorithms. Moreover, the resulting node deployments exhibit greater uniformity, fewer coverage holes, and lower redundancy. The experimental results demonstrate that FTSCHOA effectively overcomes the limitations of traditional algorithms and provides an efficient and practical solution for WSN node deployment optimization, with strong potential for application in real-world scenarios such as environmental monitoring and smart agriculture.

Coverage in wireless sensor networks is a critical issue since it reflects the cost and detection capability of the network. Sensor coverage model is closely to the sensing functions of different types of sensors while network coverage is a collaborative measure from geographically distributed sensors. The coverage problems in wireless sensor networks have been formulated in various ways with different assumptions, constraints and objectives. In this work, a collaborative coverage model is proposed in the target surveillance application, while sensor sensing probabilistic model is introduced. Furthermore, a collaborative target coverage optimization algorithm (CTCOMSN) is presented to prolong the network lifetime in energy constraint mobile sensor networks. Simulation results show that CTCOMSN can prolong the lifetime greatly while improving the sensing quality.