A Method for Determining Ad-Hoc Redundant Coverage Area in a Wireless Sensor Network Versavia Ancusa and Razvan Bogdan Computer and Software Engineering Department, Faculty of Automation and Computers, “Politehnica” University of Timisoara, Romania versavia.ancusa@cs.upt.ro, razvan.bogdan@cs.upt.ro Abstract. This paper proposes an analytical method for determining ad-hoc redundant coverage area in a wireless sensor network. This method can be alternatively used in order to determine a man-in-the-middle attack. Keywords- wireless sensor network, ad-hoc networks, redundancy, coverage area, man-in-the-middle attack 1. Introduction Wireless networks have come to be one of the most common facilities of technological society and we live in the present days. More than this, the concept of communicating by not wired methods, has provided a large spectrum of applications and new opportunities for corporations. Military applications, search and rescue operations, disaster management, environmental monitoring, collaborative computing are just a few examples in which this technology is largely applied. The key point in all these different practical solutions is built on wireless communication and also on sensors. The sensors are the media which can harvest for data. The data is vital for the applications. Regarding the type of application, it ca be vital for the life of so many people that are depending on it. Therefore the research area of wireless sensor networks is of huge importance. More than this, the problem of security assurance is a state-of-the-art one giving the reliable nature of such a network A wireless ad-hoc network is defined as being a wireless network without any central controlling authority [1]. Every data can be send from a certain node to any other node through zero, one or more intermediate nodes. Such networks are characterized by the fact that the data communication from a source to a destination can pass through certain intermediate nodes. This means that a node can not only to send and receive data, but also to act as a router because it can forward data to the other nodes. Even if such a network is a fixed infrastructure [1] that has a manageable access point, a very important feature is the fact that the devices can self-organize among themselves to form an on-the-fly network. In modeling such a network, especially an ad-hoc sensor network, a problem can be the coverage areas of the sensors. While the ideal case is a perfect homogenous area (Figure 1a), a more realistic approach is a heterogeneous coverage (like the one in Figure 1b) a b Figure 1. a – homogeneous coverage of an area, b –heterogeneous coverage of an area S1 S2 S3 S4 S6 S2 S7 S3 S5 S1 S4 S7 S5 S6 2011 2nd International Conference on Networking and Information Technology IPCSIT vol.17 (2011) © (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore 95