Title: Event-driven sensor deployment using self-organizing maps

Authors: Cris Koutsougeras, Yi Liu, Rong Zheng

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Industrial Technology, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA 70402, USA. ' Department of Computer Science, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA. ' Department of Computer Science, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA

Abstract: Coverage is an important optimization objective in pre and post-deployment stage of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). In this paper, we address the issue of placing a finite set of sensors to cover an area of arbitrary geometry. Unlike many existing works concerned with uniform coverage of a target area, we take into account the realistic consideration of the probability density for events to be sensed, termed as event-driven coverage. The objective is to distribute sensors so that the distribution density of the sensors matches that of the probability density of events to be sensed. The expected event distribution is assumed to be stationary and known a priori, directly or indirectly, in the form of sample maps. In this context we explore and evaluate the concept of Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs) and its derivative variants to address the coverage problem. Various forms of SOMs methods as well as the known methods of Virtual Fields are also compared via experimentation.

Keywords: sensor deployment; event-driven coverage; self-organizing maps; SOM; wireless sensor networks; WSNs; wireless networks; sensor distribution; virtual fields.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2008.018474

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2008 Vol.3 No.3, pp.142 - 151

Published online: 25 May 2008 *

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