Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are often deployed to monitor a region of interest. With sweep coverage, mobile sensor nodes are scheduled to move along a planned route (i.e. sweep route) in order to collect the data from a series of Point of Interests (POIs) sequentially. In this paper, we generalize the sweep coverage problem by proposing a new coverage paradigm, group sweep coverage. With group sweep coverage, the POIs are divided into several groups. A group is said to be covered when one of the POIs in the group is covered. The goal in group sweep coverage is to construct a sweep route that mobile sensor nodes should follow in order to cover all groups during each predefined period. In our research, we devised two algorithms for group sweep coverage: AGSC and DSRM. AGSC is a centralized scheme whose approximation ratio is 5Δ. Namely, the length of the sweep route generated by AGSC is at most 5Δ times that of the optimal sweep route. DSRM is a distributed scheme for large-scale networks with dynamic POIs. Compared with AGSC, DSRM leads to the same approximation ratio and better scalability. Our experimental results indicate that both AGSC and DSRM outperform the state-of-the-art schemes in terms of average and maximal sweep route length.

无线传感器网络（WSN）通常被部署为监视感兴趣的区域。利用扫描覆盖，移动传感器节点被安排为沿着计划的路线（即扫描路线）移动，以便顺序地从一系列兴趣点（POI）收集数据。在本文中，我们通过提出一个新的覆盖范式，即组扫描覆盖，来概括扫描覆盖问题。通过组扫描覆盖，将POI分为几个组。当一个组中的一个POI被覆盖时，该组就被覆盖。组扫描范围的目标是构建移动传感器节点应遵循的扫描路径，以便在每个预定义时间段内覆盖所有组。在我们的研究中，我们设计了两种用于组扫描的算法：AGSC和DSRM。AGSC是一种集中方案，其近似比率为5Δ。即 AGSC生成的扫描路径的长度最多是最佳扫描路径的5倍。DSRM是具有动态POI的大规模网络的分布式方案。与AGSC相比，DSRM具有相同的近似率和更好的可伸缩性。我们的实验结果表明，AGSC和DSRM在平均和最大扫掠路线长度方面都优于最新方案。