A new three-dimensional wireless multimedia sensor network simulation environment for connected coverage problems
Haluk Rahmi Topcuoglu, Murat Ermiş, İlker Bekmezci, Mesut Sifyan · SIMULATION · 2010
A wireless multimedia sensor network (WMSN) is a network of wirelessly interconnected sensors that can gather multimedia information, such as sound and vision. One of the most important design issues of a WMSN is to maximize the coverage, while preserving the network connectivity. Although there are many studies about coverage for WMSNs, most of them are based on two-dimensional terrain assumptions. However, particularly for outdoor applications, three-dimensional (3-D) terrain structure affects the performance of the WMSN remarkably. In this paper, a novel 3-D WMSN simulation environment for connected coverage issues is presented. There are four main modules of our simulation environment. The terrain generator ( TerGen) generates a synthetic 3-D landscape with different weather conditions (snow, rain, and fog), object occlusions (artificial or natural objects), and toughness levels of terrain (smooth or rough). The scenario editor ( SenEd) is used to define various sensor types that have various behavioral and locational attributes. The outputs of TerGen and SenEd are the inputs of the simulator engine ( SimEn), which simulates the WMSN and gives the performance results. The Optimization Module ( OptMod), which is optional, can be used to determine the location of the sensors optimally, while satisfying a set of predefined constraints. Different scenarios are simulated to show the capabilities of the simulation environment. The performance results show that the 3-D terrain structure affects the coverage performance of the WMSN directly. The object occlusions and weather conditions are also very important for WMSN coverage.