Abstract: Wireless sensor network accelerates the development of wireless communication， and the level of wireless network coverage will directly affect the performance of networks. Therefore， to improve the unreasonable deployment of sensor nodes due to random distribution， a relatively optimal coverage algorithm for wireless sensor networks was presented. The local search ability of the particle swarm algorithm was insufficient，easy to fall into the local extreme points，and could not get the optimal results. In this paper，the problem of the particle swarm algorithm was compensated by introducing the glowworm swarm optimization（GSO）algorithm with strong local search ability，which could improve the effective coverage of the network and complete the fast coverage of nodes. Finally，the experimental validation showed that the improved GSO （IGSO） algorithm proposed had better network coverage than the traditional whale optimization algorithm（WOA） and particle swarm optimization（PSO）algorithm.