Theoretical Analysis of the Area Coverage in a UAV-based Wireless Sensor Network

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is usually deployed in a field of interest (FoI) for detecting or monitoring some special events and then forwarding the aggregated data to the designated data center through sink nodes or gateways. Traditionally, the WSN requires the intensive deployment in which the extra sensor nodes are deployed to achieve the required coverage level. Fortunately, depending on the developments of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) techniques, the UAV has been widely adopted in both military and civilian applications. Comparing with the traditional mobile sensor nodes, the UAV has much faster moving speed, longer deployment range and relatively longer serving time. Consequently, the UAV can be considered as a perfect carrier for the existing sensing equipment and used to form a UAV-based WSN (UWSN). In this paper, we theoretically analyse the coverage problem in the UWSN. Based on the integral geometry, we solve the aforementioned question. The experimental results further verifies our theoretical results.