A Coverage-Aware Distributed k-Connectivity Maintenance Algorithm for Arbitrarily Large k in Mobile Sensor Networks

• Published in: IEEE/ACM transactions on networking Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 62 - 75
• Main Authors: Akram, Vahid Khalilpour, Dagdeviren, Orhan, Tavli, Bulent
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.02.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: <italic xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">k -connectivity; Algorithms; Connectivity; connectivity maintenance; Conservation; distributed algorithm; fault tolerance; Maintenance; Maintenance engineering; Mobile sensor networks; Network topology; Nodes; Partitioning algorithms; reliability; Remote sensors; Restoration; Robot sensing systems; Robotics; Sensors; Time complexity; Topology; Upper bound; Wireless networks; Wireless sensor networks
• ISSN: 1063-6692; 1558-2566
• DOI: 10.1109/TNET.2021.3104356

Mobile sensor networks (MSNs) have emerged from the interaction between mobile robotics and wireless sensor networks. MSNs can be deployed in harsh environments, where failures in some nodes can partition MSNs into disconnected network segments or reduce the coverage area. A <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">k </tex-math></inline-formula>-connected network can tolerate at least <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">k </tex-math></inline-formula>-1 arbitrary node failures without losing its connectivity. In this study, we present a coverage-aware distributed <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">k </tex-math></inline-formula>-connectivity maintenance (restoration) algorithm that generates minimum-cost movements of active nodes after a node failure to preserve a persistent <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">k </tex-math></inline-formula> value subject to a coverage conservation criterion. The algorithm accepts a coverage conservation ratio (as a trade-off parameter between coverage and movements) and facilitates coverage with the generated movements according to this value. Extensive simulations and testbed experiments reveal that the proposed algorithm restores <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">k </tex-math></inline-formula>-connectivity more efficiently than the existing restoration algorithms. Furthermore, our algorithm can be utilized to maintain <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">k </tex-math></inline-formula>-connectivity without sacrificing the coverage, significantly.