On Design of Collaborative Mobile Sensor Networks for Deadline-Sensitive Mobile Target Detection

Mobile wireless sensor networks have been widely studied in the context of various applications, such as environmental monitoring, battlefield surveillance, and intrusion detection. One important problem in the context of such applications is detection of mobile targets (e.g., invaders) through the use of mobile sensor nodes. Consider a closed region, patrolled by several mobile sensors, attempting to capture targets which are in turn capable of sensing their environments in order to plan their movements and avoid detection. The focus of this paper is on an approach for solving this pursuit-evasion problem under a deadline constraint. Our central idea is the application of transient analysis of a discrete-time Markov model in (a) modeling and analyzing the above problem, and (b) investigating the trade-off between the number of mobile sensors and the quality of detection, as represented by the probability of detection by a given deadline. With the aid of the Markov model, two detection strategies, termed Single-hop Presence-aware Detection Strategy and Multi-hop Potentiality-aware Detection Strategy, are proposed with the aim of effectively capturing the mobile target. Furthermore, for practical purposes as well as for scalability, a distributed algorithm is developed such that each sensor is able to determine its movements by using local information only. Our results indicate that our models are able to (a) predict the expected detection quality accurately, and (b) determine the proper required number of sensors for satisfying the required quality of detection.