Computing Best Coverage Path in the Presence of Obstacles in a Sensor Field

We study the presence of obstacles in computing BCP (s, t) (Best Coverage Path between two points s and t) in a 2D field under surveillance by sensors. Consider a set of m line segment obstacles and n point sensors on the plane. For any path between s to t, p is the least protected point along the path such that the Euclidean distance between p and its closest sensor is maximum. This distance (the path’s cover value) is minimum for a BCP (s, t). We present two algorithmic results. For opaque obstacles, i.e., which obstruct paths and block sensing capabilities of sensors, computation of BCP (s, t) takes O((mn + n) log(mn + n)) time and O(mn +n) space. For transparent obstacles, i.e., which only obstruct paths, but allows sensing, computation of BCP (s, t) takes O(nm + n) time and O(m + n) space. We believe, this is one of the first efforts to study the presence of obstacles in coverage problems in sensor networks.