Abstract
This paper addresses the problem of coordinating the motion of the nodes in a mobile sensor network for area coverage applications under RF communication limitations. During network evolution, the area sensed by the network increases until it reaches optimum configuration, while information for decision making is acquired distributively among the nodes via a prespecified number of hops. Unlike previous works, radio range is not demanded to be at least twice the sensing range, imposing an extra constraint in the overall problem setup. The proposed control scheme guarantees end-to-end RF connectivity of the network, while attaining optimum area coverage. Results are further verified via simulation studies.
Highlights
Distributed coordination of robotic swarms has been studied widely in the last years due to its direct application in missions where human interference may be risky or even prohibited
Connectivity preservation during the deployment stage is an issue of major importance, since this ensures information flow among the mobile nodes in order to cooperate for achieving their common goal
In order to emphasize in connectivity issues, the communication radius of the nodes’ antennas was selected equal to r, R = 0.2 units, imposing a quite hard constraint in connectivity preservation during the coordination stage, while the nodes are a priori demanded to retain at most 3-hop connectivity
Summary
Distributed coordination of robotic swarms has been studied widely in the last years due to its direct application in missions where human interference may be risky or even prohibited. Connectivity preservation during the deployment stage is an issue of major importance, since this ensures information flow among the mobile nodes in order to cooperate for achieving their common goal Assuming both limited-range sensing and communication abilities of the platforms, it is evident that demand for connectivity preservation and area coverage optimality cannot be achieved simultaneously, and there is tradeoff to be balanced [4, 5]. Though, the nodes’ radio range is assumed to be fixed and can be less than the aforementioned bound (i.e., twice the sensing range) This restriction imposition, met most often in practical scenarios (where the sensors’ and antennas’ ranges are uncorrelated), leads in inability to apply already presented area coverage-oriented coordination schemes [2, 6, 22, 23].
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