An Integrated Self-deployment and Coverage Maintenance Scheme for Mobile Sensor Networks

Abstract

In mobile sensor networks, the coverage improvement problem, i.e., maximizing and/or maintaining overall sensing coverage, is a fundamental research issue attracting many researchers. Existing coverage improvement algorithms such as sensor self-deployment algorithms and sensor relocation protocols enhance coverage with limitations due to their specialized design purposes. In this paper, we propose an integrated self-deployment and coverage maintenance scheme, which solves the coverage improvement problem in a complete sense. The proposed scheme is an integration of four algorithms: a node redundancy determination algorithm, a sensor self-deployment algorithm, a sensor relocation protocol, and a sensor replenishment protocol. By this scheme, redundant sensors are placed together with non-redundant ones in the target field at random; non-redundant sensors autonomously scatter to form a network with maximal coverage after initial placement; all the sensors collaborate to compensate coverage loss throughout network lifetime. Mentionably, we notice that no existing scheme besides ours take into account the impact on coverage from nodal sensing range diminishment. At the end, we summarize the paper and discuss our future work.