An algorithm for boundary discovery in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of a large number of nodes networked via wireless links. In many WSN settings, sensor nodes are deployed in an ad hoc manner. One important issue in this context is to detect the boundary of the deployed network to ensure that the sensor nodes cover the target area. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that can be used to discover the boundary of a randomly deployed WSN. The algorithm does not require the sensor nodes to be equipped with positioning devices and is scalable for large number of nodes. Simulation experiments are developed to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms for different network topologies. The simulation results show that the algorithm detects the boundary nodes of the network with high accuracy.