Home // International Journal On Advances in Security, volume 9, numbers 3 and 4, 2016 // View article

Stabilizing Breach-Free Sensor Barriers

Authors:
Jorge Cobb
Chin-Tser Huang

Keywords: Stabilization; Sensor networks; Sensor barriers.

Abstract:
Consider an area that is covered by a wireless sensor network whose purpose is to detect any intruder trying to cross through the area. The sensors can be divided into multiple subsets, known as barriers. The area remains protected, or covered, by a sensor barrier if the barrier divides the area into two regions, such that no intruder can move from one region into the other and avoid detection. By having only one barrier active at any time, the duration of the coverage is maximized. However, sensor barriers may suffer from breaches, which may allow an intruder to cross the area while one barrier is being replaced by another. Breaches are not dependent on the structure of an individual sensor barrier. Instead, they are dependent on the relative shape of two consecutive sensor barriers. In this paper, the best-performing centralized heuristic for breach-free barriers is transformed into a distributed protocol. Furthermore, the protocol is stabilizing, i.e., starting from any state, a subsequent state is reached and maintained where the sensors are organized into breach-free barriers. A detailed proof of the stabilization of the protocol is also given. Finally, it is shown how the barriers can organize themselves into a sleep-wakeup schedule without centralized support.

Pages: 133 to 145

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2016. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2016

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2636