Improving connectivity and coverage of wireless sensor networks using mobile robots

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are often deployed in hardly accessible or hazardous fields. Their main goal is to monitor the target field and transmit surveillance data to a sink. Therefore, connectivity of the sensor network and the coverage ratio of the monitored area are the most relevant concerns to reach these goals. In this paper, we propose to use several mobile robots to assist sensor networks redeployment in order to enhance the network connectivity and the coverage ratio of the monitored area. We model the sensor network as an islets-based topology and we propose to use robots to detect and heal connectivity and coverage holes availing the sensors redundancy. Preliminary simulations showed that our new scheme can significantly enhance the connectivity ratio of the initial network and improve the coverage ratio by using few numbers of robots.