Enhancing Resolution and Fault Tolerance of Barrier Coverage with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Securing the borders of a protected region using sensor network deployment is termed “barrier coverage.” Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with cameras pointed downward can serve as mobile sensors to achieve barrier coverage of a protected region. The resolution of the camera, in addition to the extent of coverage, is a crucial parameter used to evaluate the quality of barrier coverage of a region. This paper presents a cost function that measures the resolution of a barrier coverage network, which can be used to improve the quality of an already established barrier-covered network. An optimization problem is proposed to find the barrier coverage while adhering to an overlapping constraint for UAVs that are placed arbitrarily in the belt. The approach is also demonstrated to be applicable for borders of any shape by utilizing multiple rectangular belts in combination. Furthermore, a fault tolerance model is proposed to ensure continuous barrier coverage even in the presence of faulty UAVs. This model utilizes nearby functional UAVs to compensate for any gaps and preserve the overlap constraint. Specifically, the model identifies neighboring functional UAVs for each faulty UAV and uses them to maintain barrier coverage.