Impact of Mobility on Consensus Building in the Leader-Follower Model

Enhancing the system connectivity in a mobile ad hoc network is a topic that warrants much more research. There are numerous ways to improve the connectivity of a network, but it is important to choose a solution that is optimal as well as cost- efficient. This paper presents a method to enhance connectivity in an aerial network and achieve consensus at a faster rate. Considering a leader- follower structure, it is shown that the rate of node interaction is increased by empowering the leaders with mobility. This not only enhances the system connectivity but also reduces the number of transitions required to reach consensus. As a result, the information propagates in the network at a faster rate. Mobile ad hoc networks are not widely implemented in the real world, even after years of research carried out in this field. Mobility increases the complexity of a network and impacts its performance negatively. Addressing this gap in the literature, this research concentrates on the significance of leaders with random movement in a leader-follower structure with isolated static and mobile nodes. The core of this research is to facilitate leader nodes with different random mobility models and inspecting the behavior of the network in achieving consensus. Three mobility models are considered for this research: Random Walk, Random Waypoint, and Random Direction. The leader-follower model is studied in these models and the impact of their respective mobility patterns is compared and analyzed. These random mobility models are simulated in an open Java software called Bonn- Motion, and the movement data acquired from the simulations are analyzed in MATLAB. Furthermore, these models are compared with respect to the number of transitions for each model. All three models have been simulated with the same parameters and constraints. The results presented in this paper give insight into how mobility improves connectivity of a sensor network under the leader-follower model with mobile leaders.