Decentralized Swarm Coordination: A Combined Coverage/Connectivity Approach

Decentralized motion coordination for coverage optimization purposes in mobile sensor networks is the scope of this paper. Coordination is performed based on spatial Voronoi tessellation, while taking into consideration the limited sensing capabilities of the agents. Each node performs an independent optimization in order to increase network’s area coverage via its motion, while it attains information from its current and future Delaunay neighbors. A decentralized algorithm is proposed in order to achieve optimal network’s coverage, based on local information. Connectivity issues are analyzed in detail, while a lower bound on the communication radius of the nodes is derived, in order to attain sufficient information for performing the corresponding optimization. An agent moves inside its region of responsibility in a way that the total area surveyed by the network is a monotonically increasing function of time. The online control action makes the network adaptive to possible changes in the environment.