DREAM: On the reaction delay in large scale wireless networks with mobile sensors

In this work, we present a monitor and rescue system utilizing hybrid networks which is a integration of stationary sensor networks and mobile sensor networks: stationary sensor networks comprised of large numbers of small, simple, and inexpensive wireless sensors, and the mobile sensor network contains a set of mobile sensors (robots). The static sensors in our network have “monitoring” ability, i.e., any activated static sensor can detect the event as long as its sensing range intersects the event region. And the mobile sensors have “moving” and “rescuing” ability, e.g., they can move toward the event region with limited speed and further perform certain rescuing/processing operations on the event. We can consider the event as a hazard, e.g., wild fire, and the mobile sensors as fireman robots. As soon as the fire is detected by the static sensors, the fireman robots are expected to move from its initial location to the hazard region within minimum latency. We define the reaction delay of the system as the delay from the occurrence of event till at least one mobile sensor reaches the event. In order to satisfy certain reaction delay requirement while minimizing the total cost, we propose a number of deployment strategies for the stationary sensor network and mobile sensor network respectively. We further design a random wake-up scheduling for the static sensors for the sake of energy efficiency. Finally, we propose a pure distributed motion strategy for mobile sensors without reliance on localization services such as GPS, focusing on simple algorithms for distributed decision making and information propagation. We demonstrate the efficacy of our system in simulation, providing empirical results.