Barrier coverage in energy harvesting sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can be used effectively to form barriers that monitor strips of land for applications such as homeland security and critical infrastructure protection. When WSNs are used as barriers, they are typically deployed for extended period of time, so it is of great importance that the network has a long lifetime. Sensors are highly constrained in their energy usage, even when deploying the current energy-harvesting technology. It is necessary that the harvested energy be used effectively. The lifetime problem for WSNs with no energy harvesting has been studied extensively. In this paper, we study lifetime issues of the k-barrier coverage problem for energy harvesting WSNs. First we develop an algorithm that finds a repeating sleep/wakeup schedule that can provide the perpetual operation of the maximum number of barriers in an energy harvesting WSN. Then in the case that perpetual operation can not be achieved, we give an exact solution to the problem of achieving maximum lifetime for the application of k-barrier coverage in energy harvesting WSNs.