How Resilient is Grid-based WSN Coverage to Deployment Errors?

In this paper we study efficient grid-based sensor deployment planning for coverage when sensor placements are perturbed by random errors around their corresponding grid vertices. We propose a generic approach to evaluate the average coverage percentage of the sensing field. Our generic approach can be used with all types of grid-shapes, all kinds of random error distributions, and different sensing models. We apply the generic approach to two practical deployment scenarios, namely, the triangular grid-based deployment with bounded uniform random errors and unbounded normal random errors. For both cases, the average coverage percentage is computed numerically and verified by Monte-Carlo simulations. Based on the numerical results, we discuss several approaches to efficient grid-based deployment planning for coverage and illustrate these through numerical examples.