Dynamic Barrier Coverage in a Wireless Sensor Network for Smart Grids

Sensors (Basel). 2018 Dec 22;19(1):41. doi: 10.3390/s19010041.

Abstract

The development of engineering technology such as inspection robots (IR) for transmission lines and wireless sensor networks (WSN) are widely used in the field of smart grid monitoring. However, how to integrate inspection robots into wireless sensor networks is still a great challenge to form an efficient dynamic monitoring network for transmission lines. To address this problem, a dynamic barrier coverage (DBC) method combining inspection robot and wireless sensor network (WSN) is proposed to realize a low-cost, energy-saving and dynamic smart grid-oriented sensing system based on mobile wireless sensor network. To establish an effective smart grid monitoring system, this research focuses on the design of an effective and safe dynamic network coverage and network nodes deployment method. Multiple simulation scenarios are implemented to explore the variation of network performance with different parameters. In addition, the dynamic barrier coverage method for the actual scene of smart grid monitoring considers the balance between network performance and financial costs.

Keywords: barrier coverage; delay-tolerant sensor network; distributed algorithm; inspection robot; ordinal potential game; real-time network; smart grid; wireless sensor network.