| Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been employed in numerous military and civilian applications. Some application areas are in battlefield, surveillance, biological detection, and environmental monitoring. A major challenge to such applications is the sensor area-coverage (SAC), which refers to the techniques and mechanisms of placing sensors and their coordination in a mission space (field) to monitor the physical environment in such a way to achieve the application coverage objectives. This thesis develops a sensor area coverage package (SACPac) that simulates some selected coverage algorithms and their enhancements, and analyzes their performance parameters under various scenarios. The performance parameters considered include coverage ratio, resiliency of the field coverage against sensor failures, energy efficiency, and security of communication among sensors. The thesis also develops a prototype of communication for sending the position of an object via a mobile device to the server on which SACPac runs, so that the object trajectory can be displayed. SACPac provides the foundation for further enhancements and future research. It can also be used as an educational tool for those interested in the SAC problem. |
