Optimal strategies for searching a mobile object using mobile sensors in a grid environment

Abstract

This paper aims to find optimal strategies for mobile sensors to search a mobile object in a square/rectangular grid environment. Strategies decide the initial position of mobile sensors, optimizing search space and number of mobile sensors assigned for searching the mobile object. In the proposed methodology, mobile sensors are searchers and the mobile object is the target. In this article, optimal strategies for different grid structures are analyzed and illustrated with suitable figures. Basic mathematical and logical concepts are applied to find the strategies. These strategies are invariable for any size of grid environment. The novelty of the proposed methodology is to determine strategies for searching a target using minimum number of searchers for all sizes of square/rectangular grid environments with 100% detection rate. To the best of our knowledge, no article presents or demonstrates such case study for making strategy policies to solve such kind of problems.