A Distributed Cellular Automaton Algorithm for Barrier Formation in Mobile Sensor Networks

Abstract

There is growing interest in the application of wireless sensor networks to the problem of monitoring international borders. In this application, barrier coverage is essential in order to ensure that intrusion events are detected. The use of mobile sensors has the potential to enable barrier coverage to be achieved and maintained in hostile environments where the orderly deployment of sensors is impossible. In this paper, we present a distributed cellular automaton based algorithm for autonomous deployment of mobile sensors to achieve barrier coverage. We compare the algorithm with an existing, state-of-the-art algorithm and show that our proposed algorithm achieves barrier coverage with competitive or improved energy cost, and with a communication overhead that is orders of magnitude less. For dense deployment scenarios, our algorithm uses up to six times less energy than the state-of-the-art algorithm.