A Movement-Assisted Deployment of Collaborating Autonomous Sensors for Indoor and Outdoor Environment Monitoring.

Ewa Niewiadomska-Szynkiewicz,Andrzej Sikora,Michał Marks

doi:10.3390/s16091497

Abstract

Using mobile robots or unmanned vehicles to assist optimal wireless sensors deployment in a working space can significantly enhance the capability to investigate unknown environments. This paper addresses the issues of the application of numerical optimization and computer simulation techniques to on-line calculation of a wireless sensor network topology for monitoring and tracking purposes. We focus on the design of a self-organizing and collaborative mobile network that enables a continuous data transmission to the data sink (base station) and automatically adapts its behavior to changes in the environment to achieve a common goal. The pre-defined and self-configuring approaches to the mobile-based deployment of sensors are compared and discussed. A family of novel algorithms for the optimal placement of mobile wireless devices for permanent monitoring of indoor and outdoor dynamic environments is described. They employ a network connectivity-maintaining mobility model utilizing the concept of the virtual potential function for calculating the motion trajectories of platforms carrying sensors. Their quality and utility have been justified through simulation experiments and are discussed in the final part of the paper.

Highlights

Progress in hardware and networking technologies enables large-scale deployment of collaborating sensing devices and the creation of modern data acquisition systems that can greatly enhance the capability to sense and control physical environments
The aim of our research is to construct of a multi-hop wireless sensor network that enables sensing coverage of a bounded region of interest ROI ⊂ W and that intermittently transmits measurements to the base station
Tools for mobile robot motion simulation are provided by simulation environments for mobile robotics (e.g., V-Rep [37])

Summary

Introduction

Progress in hardware and networking technologies enables large-scale deployment of collaborating sensing devices and the creation of modern data acquisition systems that can greatly enhance the capability to sense and control physical environments. Rising demand for the capabilities of sensing systems, the lack of fixed network infrastructure and the limited energy and computation resources of their components provoke a broad spectrum of hardware and software engineering challenges involving high quality and secure communication, localization, optimal deployment, energy-efficiency, self-operability, scalability and performance. To meet these needs, a variety of methods is used and implemented, which results in the development of novel communication protocols, data acquisition algorithms, localization schemes and deployment techniques.

Objectives

Results

Conclusion