Differentiated surveillance for sensor networks

For many sensor network applications such as military surveillance, it is necessary to provide full sensing coverage to a security-sensitive area while at the same time minimizing energy consumption and extending system lifetime by leveraging the redundant deployment of sensor nodes. It is also preferable for the sensor network to provide differentiated surveillance service for various target areas with different degrees of security requirements. In this paper, we propose a differentiated surveillance service for sensor networks based on an adaptable energy-efficient sensing coverage protocol. In the protocol, each node is able to dynamically decide a schedule for itself to guarantee a certain degree of coverage (DOC) with average energy consumption inversely proportional to the node density. Several optimizations and extensions are proposed to provide even better performance. Simulation shows that our protocol accomplishes differentiated surveillance with low energy consumption. It outperforms other state-of-the-art schemes by as much as 50% reduction in energy consumption and as much as 130% increase in the half-life of the network.