A 3D sensing model and practical sensor placement based on coverage and cost evaluation

This paper proposes a sensor model in three dimensional (3D) space, where the height of sensor above ground is variable and the position of sensor on the ground is limited. Traditional sensor models treat the sensor placement area as a film and there is no placement limits as well. As a consequence, the number of sensors is very large and the performance is not such ideal as simulation. In this paper, we develop a novel model for sensor placement, which makes sensors possible to be set at different height above ground, so that the coverage rate can be analyzed in 3D space and the simulation result can be more dependable. We also propose a corresponding 3D coverage rate evaluation method to be used for our proposed 3D model. In order to test our proposed model and evaluation method, the system is designed and numerical and graphical simulators are developed. Experiments are conducted to quantify trade-off relationship between coverage rate and cost, i.e., the number of sensors, which can make sensor placement strategy more practical. From the experimental results, we confirmed that the proposed 3D model and evaluation method is effective in a 3D space.