Learnable WSN Deployment of Evidential Collaborative Sensing Model

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), coverage and deployment are the two most crucial issues when conducting detection tasks. However, the detection information collected from sensors is oftentimes not fully utilized and efficiently integrated. Such sensing model and deployment strategy, therefore, cannot reach the maximum quality of coverage, particularly when the number of sensors within WSNs expands significantly. In this article, we aim to achieve the optimal coverage quality of WSN deployment. We develop a collaborative sensing model of sensors to enhance detection capabilities of WSNs, by leveraging the collaborative information derived from the combination rule under the framework of evidence theory. In this model, the performance evaluation of evidential fusion systems is adopted as the criterion of the sensor selection. A learnable sensor deployment network (LSDNet) considering both sensor contribution and detection capability is proposed for achieving the optimal deployment of WSNs. Moreover, we deeply investigate the algorithm for finding the requisite minimum number of sensors that realize the full coverage of WSNs. A series of numerical examples, along with an application of forest area monitoring, are employed to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed algorithms.