Voronoi-Based Cooperative Node Deployment Algorithm in Mobile Sensor Networks

Abstract

Providing adequate coverage for the Region of Interest (RoI) is an essential step to achieve the smooth functioning of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in many applications such as national security, surveillance, military, health care, and environmental monitoring. One of the techniques to provide the required coverage is to employ a node deployment algorithm to accurately locate all sensor nodes in the RoI to obtain the maximum coverage. Distributed node deployment algorithms in Mobile Sensor Networks (MSNs) are of more interest as all nodes have to cooperatively move to a position to provide overall optimal coverage. The final coverage offered by most of the algorithms reported in the literature is highly dependent on the initial coverage after the initial deployment. In this paper, the Voronoi-based Cooperative Node Deployment (VCOND) algorithm is proposed to efficiently provide the maximum coverage regardless of the initial locations of sensor nodes. Despite other algorithms which terminate the movement of each node solely based on the status of the current node and neglect the neighbourhood circumstances, the knowledge of the node one-hop vicinity is reflected on VCOND decision using two criteria: density of neighbourhood and sensing coverage efficiency. This effectively alleviates the dependency of the algorithm to the initial deployment of sensors while providing the maximum coverage. Our extensive simulation study shows not only a higher percentage of area coverage by VCOND but with less dependency on the initial deployment of sensors.