Surface Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

Coverage is a fundamental problem in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Existing studies on this topic focus on 2D ideal plane coverage and 3D full space coverage. The 3D surface of a targeted Field of Interest is complex in many real world applications; and yet, existing studies on coverage do not produce practical results. In this paper, the authors propose a new coverage model called surface coverage. In surface coverage, the targeted Field of Interest is a complex surface in 3D space and sensors can be deployed only on the surface. They show that existing 2D plane coverage is merely a special case of surface coverage.