A Method for Maximum Coverage of the Territory by Sensors with Minimization of Cost and Assessment of Survivability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article by Volodymyr Petrivskyi et al. describes the methods to maximize network coverage by sensors with minimizing the network’s cost. This is achieved by selecting optimal values for coverage radius and the extent of coverage area intersection. The authors also assess the survivability of the sensor network. The manuscript is well written. A lot of emphasis is laid on the approach to developing the method and its applicability, which is commendable. The work is significant in developing an optimal sensor network for many different areas of application. I have a few points of concern that I will indicate here and hope the authors are able to address those issues.

1. Should S1 not be 4r² in equation 3? As the authors mention S­₁ to be the area of the square described around a circle with a coverage radius r?
2. Can the authors check the S_uncovered in equation 6? Since there is an overlap between the circles the πr² term in the equation is overestimating the area. Please clarify.
3. What do -ve values of uncovered areas in figure 8 indicate?
4. Section 3.2 needs a better explanation.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The review is attached

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The authors claimed in this finding that by solving a nonlinear multicriteria optimization problem, they can optimize the sensor coverage area by minimizing the cost of the network and maximizing covered territory. Well, the abstract is very weak and no substantial factors are covered. I, therefore, advise following the given suggestion and re-draft the abstract.

The first two lines must encompass the context of the study and the research problem, further two lines must be covered by the objective of the papers with unfolding the description of the title. In the next 2 to 4 lines the methodology will be covered. Afterward, the next two lines are for result and performance. In these lines, the author must define how the results and performance are being achieved, for instance, by conducting either simulation or physical implementation. Please mention the name of the simulation or the physical method. The result statistics must be mentioned in the last two lines and either in percentage or with real-time values. 

The introduction section is lacking serious elements such as wiring the plausible background. I saw that authors have mixed introduction with related work section which reflects that authors didn't go through the author's guidelines. There must be a flowchart at the end of the introduction section exhibiting the information rovers from various sections of the system as well as presenting the sequence of the different measures of the study.

The scientific contributions of the paper are insufficient in its current form. Hence, the paper needs very significant changes, in addition, that the presentation needs also improvement.

The authors must give a clear procedure for the proposed solution with an algorithm (via flowcharts or pseudo-codes, i.e. the flowcharts of a proposal work must be drawn), and must be supported with a figure or block diagram of the proposed methodology or the topology in a formal style.

Further, it is advised that authors must add a separate literature review section that must have the following entities.

The shortcoming or challenges in previous work must be mentioned. If the previous work is free of challenges and there is no issue then what motivated the authors to propose this study? It inculcates that authors should revise the literature review and critically highlight the problems in the previous study and compare the proposed solution and tell how does the proposed solution is best fitted.

It is suggested that authors may provide a research gap as tabular data or a summary at the end of LR section. The literature should focus only on the relevant context of the study.

Energy efficiency is a key factor for sensors, but the authors do not give a clear explanation of the original contribution of the proposed solution with other state-of-art algorithms. 

In fact, section "2. Materials and Methods" depicts the methodology of the proposed study but after reading meticulously, I neither found any contribution nor novelty. The authors initiated with section directly by giving assumptions without making any context or the topology or even by designing the algorithm. This shows that authors are not aware of the scientific writing style. 

finding the exact number of sensors is made with eq 3 which is not possible because this equation can not be used for this purpose and therefore, I analyzed that this assumption is entirely wrong for this purpose.

Given "Figure 2." is out of order as authors couldn't build the scenario. 

I decisively reject the section "3. Results" which is uncouth and no proper declarations have been made either how do these results are being obtained? Either by simulation or through any other measure. 

Overall, the structure of this article is much weak, and to publish this research I personally suggest the authors generalize the problem, which is currently bound with the domain of bewindling structure, to a more abstract one, that caters to wider interests from data sciences.

Regarding the conclusion paragraph, Please precisely describe the outcome of the study and justify the statements that are mentioned in the abstract. Further, it must contain additional points, must give a clear and more discussion about the experimental results. The main novelty and contribution of needs must be summarized and highlight the recommendations on the basis of obtained results. In fact, these results are the hallmark for future extension therefore, please spend some more time writing the conclusion and on the basis of results suggest new directions.

English writing and grammar are very weak; also the selection of words is not easily understandable. Further, I found Article also contains very hard-to-read sentences which lower the readability of the article itself. I suggest 2 to 3 proofreadings with the goal of simplification of hard-to-read sentences and correcting mistakes in the use of the english language.

The cited references are either very scanty or taken from very old papers such as [2], [5], [11], [12], [16], [19]. I strongly recommend citing only the papers from recent 3-year journals. For the authors' convenience, I recommend following the structure of the following most relevant article and re-draft the structure of this article according to this one.

https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/8833767

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors tackle sensor geographic distribution as an optimization problem including bandwidth and connectivity. The model and assumption are clearly described in section 2. Then section 3 provides a huge list of figures with no explanation nor description: I have no idea how to analyze these results and what conclusion can be drawn from each individual chart. Section 4 attempts a beginning of a discussion but refers to the whole set of figures without justifying each chart individually, so that I fail to understand how the authors reach the conclusion. The optimization problem solution is reduced to "A genetic algorithm was used to solve the problem  ...": could we know a bit more about the optimization process? It seems from Fig 4 that topography is not accounted for and that coverage is limited to a circular communication path around each sensor (Fig 1). If so, how limting is this assumption? From the screenshots of Figs 3 & 9 it seems a software has been developed: is this available somewhere for the reader to improve or assess its results?

Trivial:

l.90: "value values": mayne a missing coma between the two words?

l.97: build -> built?

l.106: "Modify the" -> We modifiy the?

 

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The author replied for adding an algorithm between lines 216-221 but there is no algorithm except the flow chart without explanation. It is advised to follow the author's guidelines and follow the relevant steps of writing the algorithm.

In 1st round, the question was asked to explain the role of Eq3 that was claimed to calculate the number of sensors but in response, the author wrote that assumptions were explained between lines 112-116 but in fact, neither any further explanation was made nor it was solidified.     

Similarly, the author just replaced only desired references but not according to the requirement for example [10] and [13] are still out of the range and writing [20] is entirely out of style. In all cases, I concluded that the author is not giving importance to the recommendations. I inculcate to add more relevant references that would justify the findings and in this regard citing the following reference can increase the visibility of this finding. 

https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/8833767    

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The authors have answered my concerns about the clarity of the description. Although I am disappointed not the be able to play with the available software and have hardly any hope of seeing it becoming available to the community if not advertised in this publication, the manuscript has been improved sufficiently to be considered worth publishing, I would advise proofreading the English spelling as some grammatical errors have been introduced in the updated revision.

 

Author Response

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