Impact of mobility on convergence rate in a wireless sensor network

Consensus building in wireless sensor networks (WSN's) has been studied extensively over a number of years. However, the role of mobile nodes in a network has not been fully explored. This paper shows that introducing mobility increases the rate of convergence in partially connected and disconnected WSN. It also shows that selection of mobile nodes influences the rate of convergence. The mobile node selection scheme presented here takes advantage of the fact that some nodes are more “central” and “critical” than others and selecting them as mobile nodes can help reach consensus faster. By representing WSN as an undirected graph and analyzing various properties of the nodes, including centrality and position, a simple and effective strategy to select mobile nodes has been presented. Simulation results verify that introducing mobility coupled with an appropriate selection of mobile nodes leads to faster convergence.