Sensors are devices which have the ability to receive and respond to a signal. These sensors, when used as a group, form a sensor network. Sensors in a sensor network can communicate and transmit data. In the early stages of research on sensor networks, only static sensors were used to form a sensor network. As research advanced, a combination of static and mobile sensors was used to form a wireless sensor network instead of just static sensors. The primary advantage of this type of sensor network over a sensor network with static sensors is the ability of mobile sensors to move to a new location in the network to increase the overall area covered by the sensors. Some concerns in a wireless sensor network are coverage area, energy consumption of the sensors, the ratio of static and mobile sensors to be used in sensor network, and the deployment of sensors in a network. Major research in sensor networks is focused on addressing the issue of coverage area. The objective of this paper is to design, implement and analyze Most Overlapped First and Highest Coverage Gain algorithms that address the issue of coverage area in a wireless sensor network. Local Spiral Search was used as the base to develop these two algorithms in combination with the Utility Function. Both algorithms were tested, and the results were analyzed with coverage area and change in overlap area as the metrics. Results showed a significant gain in coverage area using both the algorithms, and there was a consistent change in overlap area for a varying number of sensors.

Master of Science