Event-Based Communication and Finite-Time Consensus Control of Mobile Sensor Networks for Environmental Monitoring.

Yu Hu,Qiang Lu,Yanzhu Hu

doi:10.3390/s18082547

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of environmental monitoring by designing a cooperative control scheme for mobile sensor networks. The proposed cooperative control scheme includes three main modules: a wireless communication module, a direction decision module, and a motion control module. In the wireless communication module, an event-based communication rule is proposed, which means that mobile sensor nodes do not send their positions, velocities, and the data of environmental attributes to the other sensor nodes in real-time for the coordination and control of mobile sensor networks. Due to using the event-based communication rule, the communication bandwidth can be saved. In the direction decision module, a radial basis function network is used to model the monitored environment and is updated in terms of the sampled environmental data and the environmental data from the other sensor nodes by the wireless communication module. The updated environment model is used to guide the mobile sensor network to move towards the region of interest in order to efficiently model the distribution map of environmental attributes, such as temperature, salinity, and pH values for the monitored environment. In the motion control module, a finite-time consensus control approach is proposed to enable the sensor nodes to quickly change their movement directions in light of the gradient information from the environment model. As a result of using the event-based communication rule in the wireless communication module, the proposed control approach can also lower the updating times of the control signal. In particular, the proposed cooperative control scheme is still efficient under the directed wireless communication situation. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed cooperative control scheme is illustrated for the problem of environmental monitoring.

Highlights

IntroductionEnvironmental monitoring involves a process of collecting data related to environmental attributes, such as temperature, salinity, pH values, odor concentration, and so on [1,3,4,5], and the goal is to build a data map to describe the environmental states
In order to gain a better understanding of the environmental states including physical, chemical, and biological parameters, environmental monitoring has obtained much attention from scientists [1,2,3].In particular, environmental monitoring involves a process of collecting data related to environmental attributes, such as temperature, salinity, pH values, odor concentration, and so on [1,3,4,5], and the goal is to build a data map to describe the environmental states
(2) We propose a finite-time consensus control approach under the event-based communication rule which enables the mobile sensor nodes to quickly adjust the movement direction such that the sensor nodes can move towards the region with the greatest information while saving computational resources

Summary

Introduction

Environmental monitoring involves a process of collecting data related to environmental attributes, such as temperature, salinity, pH values, odor concentration, and so on [1,3,4,5], and the goal is to build a data map to describe the environmental states. With technological advances in mobile sensor networks (such as autonomous surface vehicles), the investigation of how to control mobile sensor nodes to collect the data of environmental attributes and build environmental model, has received increasing attention from environmental scientists and control engineers [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. There has been a growing interest in the coordination and control of multiple mobile sensors [6,7,9,10]

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion