Maximum lifetime dependable barrier-coverage in wireless sensor networks

In a wireless sensor network, a subset of sensor nodes provides a barrier-coverage over an area of interest if the sensor nodes are dividing the area into two regions such that any object moving from one region to another is guaranteed to be detected by a sensor node. Recently, Kumar et al. introduced scheduling algorithms for the maximum lifetime barrier-coverage problem. The algorithms achieved the optimal lifetime by identifying a collection of disjoint subsets of nodes such that each subset in the collection can provide barrier-coverage over the area, and by activating each subset in turn. This introduces a new security problem of these scheduling algorithms called barrier-breach. We show there could be a way to penetrate the area protected by barrier-covers when one barrier-cover is replaced by another. To deal with this issue, we propose three different remedies for the algorithms. In addition, we compare the performance of the three approaches against an upper bound via extensive simulation and make a discussion on the results.