Sensors Deployment Enhancement by a Mobile Robot in Wireless Sensor Networks

An inherent concern for a wireless sensor network(WSN)is the coverage problem. Sensors are usually deployed in the wild to create a network of sensors intended to monitor or control a target area: Sensor networks are assumed unattended in various environments such as disaster areas, hazard fields, or battle fields. However, random node deployment often makes initial sensing holes inside the deployed area inevitable even in an extremely high density network. Furthermore, enhancing coverage is important for sensor networks to provide continuous sensing services. The most challenging aspects of the studies conducted on this topic have been supporting autonomous system with self maintenance capability where sensors and robots work together. This paper proposes to use a mobile robot to assist the initial sensors deployment and to improve sensing coverage and connectivity of monitored area. Given a set of points of interest on the surface, we study how to guide the robot to effectively eliminate coverage holes and collect redundant sensors. We propose a set of heuristics for this problem and we will verify the performance through simulation. The superior coverage and connectivity efficiency of the proposed approach is demonstrated by conducting a comparative analysis and simulation with a greedy approach.