Improving Area Coverage Using Mobility in Sensor Networks

This paper considers the problem of improving the monitoring capability (area coverage) of a sensor network using stationary and non-stationary sensor nodes. Monitoring a large area, for example in applications like environmental monitoring, requires a large number of sensor nodes which with current technology implies a prohibitive cost. The motivation of this work is to investigate the coverage improvement when mobile nodes are introduced. Specifically, we investigate path planning algorithms for mobile nodes in order to navigate autonomously to an area of interest and at the same time, improve the area coverage by coordinating their movements to pass by areas that have not been adequately sampled by the static sensors. Our aim is to give emphasis on path planning algorithms that require only “local” information and cooperation with stationary nodes. We present extensive simulation results of the algorithms investigated.