Maintenance strategies for wireless sensor networks: from a reactive to a proactive approach

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we have introduced three proactive maintenance strategies for static wireless sensor networks (WSNs) using a limited number of mobile maintainer robots: the centralised proactive maintenance strategy denoted by CPMS, the fixed distributed proactive maintenance strategy denoted by FDPMS and the adaptive distributed proactive maintenance strategy denoted by ADPMS. The proposed maintenance strategies are based on a simple energy dissipation analytical model to estimate the occurrence times of the expected sensor failures in the network. Once identified, the anticipated failures are replaced by the available robots before they happen. To select the appropriate maintainer robot for each expected failure, CPMS opts for a centralised scheduling method based on the genetic algorithm fundamentals. However, the distributed maintenance strategies (FDPMS and ADPMS) use two different WSN area partitioning methods to share the sensor maintenance tasks among the available robots. Simulation results have shown that CPMS gives the minimal network dysfunction time representing the interruption service time induced by the detected faulted nodes. However, due to its significant signalling cost, we have remarked that CPMS can be deployed only in small scale WSNs. In large‐scale ones, ADPMS has demonstrated its efficiency in terms of the network dysfunction time, the robot travelled distance and the introduced signalling cost. In particular cases, when sensor failures are uniformly distributed on the network map, FDPMS has given the best performances. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.