Full-View coverage camera sensor network (CSN) for maritime surveillance

Abstract

In conventional wireless sensor networks (WSNs), scalar phenomena can be traced using thermal or acoustic sensor nodes. In camera sensor networks (CSNs), images and videos can significantly enrich the retrieved information from the monitored environment, and hence provide more practicality and efficiency to WSNs. Recently, there has been enormous development of applications in surveillance, environment monitoring and biomedicine for CSNs that has brought a new spectrum to the coverage problem. It is indispensable to understand how the coverage of a camera depends on various network parameters to better design numerous application scenarios. In many network configurations, cameras are not mobile and they remain stationary after the initial deployment. However, different from a stationary CSN, maritime environment poses challenges on the deployment characteristic and mobility pattern for CSNs. In stationary CSNs, when the deployment characteristic and sensing model are defined, the coverage can be deduced and remain unchanged over time. In the maritime environment, camera sensors are mounted on quasi-mobile platforms such as buoys. This thesis aims to provide full-view coverage CSN for maritime surveillance using cameras mounted on buoys. It is important to provide full-view coverage because in full-view coverage, targets facing direction is taken into account to judge whether a target is guaranteed to be captured. Image shot at the frontal viewpoint of a given target considerably increases the possibility to detect and recognize the target. The full-view coverage has been achieved using equilateral triangle grid-based deployment for the CSN. To accurately emulate the maritime environment, a mobility pattern has been developed for the buoy which is attached with a cable that is nailed at the sea floor. The buoy movement follows the sea wave that is created by the wind and it is limited by the cable. The average percentage of full-view coverage has been evaluated based on different parameters such as equilateral triangle grid length, sensing radius of camera, wind speed and wave height. Furthermore, a method to improve the target detection and recognition has been proposed in the presence of poor link quality using cooperative transmission with low power consumption.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	American English
Supervisor	Peng-Yong Kong (Supervisor)