Coverage in sensor networks via persistent homology (Q2464756)

Coverage problems have arisen in a variety of engineering contexts associated to networks, communication networks, sensor networks etc. This problem is classical in algebraic topology. It consists of finding a sufficient algebraic-topological condition for a set of subspaces to cover a given space. In this paper, the authors give a sufficient condition of homological nature for a set of sensor's nodes to cover a given domain of a \(d\)-dimensional Euclidean space. This problem is trivial if the location of the nodes is known (e.g., cell phones towers), and is both nontrivial and of critical importance if the locations of the nodes are not known (e.g., if the sensor nodes are small and/or ``scattered'' over the domain and acted on by environmental factors). This homological condition is coordinate-free. It can be implemented using the computational homology software package PLEX which is a collection of MATLAB routines for building and studying simplicial complexes, generated from real or synthetic point-cloud data.