Improving coverage performance in sensor networks by using mobile sensors

Sensor networks hold the promise of facilitating large-scale, real-time data processing in complex environments. Most existing researches on sensor networks consider networks where all sensors are static nodes. We propose to improve sensor network performance by deploying a small number of mobile sensors in addition to a large number of static sensors. In this paper, we present a distributed solution that utilizes a small number of mobile sensors to improve coverage performance in sensor networks. The distributed solution includes distributed schemes for: 1) determining the boundary of a coverage hole; 2) determining the number and locations of mobile sensors for covering a hole; and 3) calling mobile sensors. We design simulation experiments to evaluate the performance of three algorithms that determine the number and locations of mobile sensors for covering a hole. Our experiments show that the integer linear programming algorithm achieves the best results with the cost of high computation requirement, while the other two heuristic algorithms achieve good sub-optimal results with small computation requirement.