Dynamic coverage with wireless sensor and actor networks in underwater environment

This paper studies the problem of dynamic coverage with wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) in underwater environment. Different from most existing works, the WSANs consist of two kinds of nodes, i.e., sensor nodes (SNs) which cannot move autonomously and actor nodes (ANs) which can move autonomously according to the performance requirement. The problem of how to coordinate two kinds of nodes to facilitate dynamic coverage in underwater environment is challenging due to their heterogeneous capabilities. To reduce redundancy of communication links and improve connectivity between ANs and SNs in underwater WSANs, a min-weighted rigid graph based topology optimization scheme is first developed, such that the underwater communication energy consumption can be saved. With the optimized topology, a dynamic coverage strategy is proposed to improve the coverage among SNs and ANs for underwater WSAN where underwater fluid motions are considered. Furthermore, it is proved that the network coverage area is connected by using the min-weighted rigid graph. Finally, simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the main results.