The computational accuracy of cover time for circular sensing range

Abstract

Sensor coverage completion is usually tracked by use of a coverage map and discretizing the target region into smaller square cells or pixels. However, real sensors are typically fixed in range thus creating circular sensing regions. In this paper, we quantitatively discuss the effect of the size of the discretization of the domain on the accuracy of the covering time of a simple random walk algorithm. A simulation algorithm is proposed using coordinate pairs to track the covered regions in order to minimise memory usage. Finally we present how accurate estimates of mean and standard deviation of cover time can be obtained by comparing between simulation results with varying discretization ratio and the domain size. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.