A Reconfiguration Framework for Multi-Sink Wireless Sensor Networks

The problem of sensor network recovery from failures due to loss of nodes is addressed; a distributed reconfiguration scheme is proposed. The approach for network formation is multi-agent based, in which the agents are provided with reconfiguration capabilities by handling neighbour nodes information. Agents perform in a coordinated way a severity analysis to determine, according to the number of affected nodes, the type of reconfiguration, which can be of three types: a) Low, for a local area, b) Medium, when the fault affects one or more clusters, and c) High, when a major reconfiguration is needed, and the networking process is restarted. The strategy is demonstrated through the simulation of network failure recovery in diverse scenarios.