Multi-Agent Simulations (MAS) for Assessing Massive Sensor Coverage and Deployment

The thesis presents the design, development, and implementation of a multi-agent simulation that models coverage and deployment of mobile and non- mobile sensors performing collaborative target-detection missions. The focus is on sensor networks with enough sensors that humans cannot individually manage each sensor. Experiments investigate novel search, coverage, and deployment algorithms, and compare them to known methods. The experiments show algorithms productive for area coverage are not useful for detecting unauthorized traversals and vice versa. Obstacles, sensor mechanisms, mission parameters, and deployment schemes are analyzed for their effect on coverage quality. This work facilitates further research in sensor coverage and deployment strategies using sensor agents.Naval Postgraduate School Monterey CA is the author of 'Multi-Agent Simulations (MAS) for Assessing Massive Sensor Coverage and Deployment', published 2003 under ISBN 9781423500032 and ISBN 1423500032.