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Coverage Problem of Sensor Networks
Mrinal Nandi and Xu Li

In this paper, we consider the coverage problem in wireless sensor and actuator networks composed of static sensors dropped stochastically in a region of interest (ROI) which is a rectangular grid. Sensors are dropped at the vertices of the grid from air. The ROI may not be fully covered as sensors may not be placed at the targeted vertices. An uncovered area in the ROI is called a sensing hole.We develop three algorithms to enable an actuator to fill up these sensing holes in the ROI. The actuator can carry and place the sensors (only one sensor at a time) according to our algorithms. The first algorithm considers that each sensor has an ID number and the other two consider sensors with no ID numbers.We also derive theoretical results in terms of the maximum distance to be traversed by the actuator, targeted towards optimizing it accordingly.

Keywords: Coverage Problem, Sensor Networks, Sensor-Actuator Networks

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