A Smart Self-Organizing Node Deployment Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Node deployment is one of the fundamental issues in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) which has not only a direct impact on the effectiveness of other operations, such as routing and data fusion, but also on the appropriateness of the provided coverage expected in many applications such as national security, surveillance, military, health care, and environmental monitoring. In mobile sensor networks, the resource-constrained move-assisted sensor nodes are used in an area to maximise the coverage within a reasonable time and energy cost. Recently, a family of algorithms, inspired by the equilibrium of molecules, have been proposed to address the coverage issue. However, these solutions lead to high energy cost and latency due to two major issues. First, almost all the nodes in the network try to move to a new position at each stage. Even worse, the decision made at each node on to which point to move at each stage is purely based on obsolete information, i.e. the current locations of moving neighbouring nodes. In this paper, we propose a new distributed algorithm, called SSND, to efficiently provide the maximum coverage for WSNs that use mobile nodes. SSND avoids to collectively, and blindly, move sensor nodes at each step but to apply an eligibility function to elect a few nodes to move using the valid information to obtain the maximum effect. Our extensive simulation study under various operational conditions shows not only a higher percentage of area coverage by SSND but with much lower power consumption and latency than those of the other protocols recently reported in the literature.