Analytic evaluation of target detection in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

In this article, we address the problem of target detection in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). We formulate the target detection problem as a line-set intersection problem and use integral geometry to analytically characterize the probability of target detection for both stochastic and deterministic deployments. Compared to previous work, we analyze WSNs where sensors have heterogeneous sensing capabilities. For the stochastic case, we evaluate the probability that the target is detected by at least k sensors and compute the free path until the target is first detected. For the deterministic case, we show an analogy between the target detection problem and the problem of minimizing the average symbol error probability in 2D digital modulation schemes. Motivated by this analogy, we propose a heuristic sensor placement algorithm, called DATE, that makes use of well-known signal constellations for determining good WSN constellations. We also propose a heuristic called CDATE for connected WSN constellations, that yields high target detection probability.