Restoring Connectivity of Damaged Sensor Networks for Long-Term Survival in Hostile Environments

Connectivity restoration plays an important role in maintaining the long-term operation in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), especially, in environment-harsh cases. However, current solutions lack the ability to handle the second damages and the capacity of designing requirement-different connectivity approaches according to different needs. In this article, we propose a durability-based connectivity establishment (DBCE) scheme for disjoint segments of WSNs. This scheme includes three approaches regarding segment evaluation or segment selection: 1) a segment shape evaluation approach; 2) a region different connectivity approach; and 3) a data traffic transfer approach, for their respective objectives. The unique characteristics of this article are twofold. On the one hand, this is the first attempt to investigate segment shapes, which we demonstrate have great impact on the robustness of the network. On the other hand, distinguished from the existing networks with uniform connectivity rule, the network is divided into two parts and different connectivity sequences and connectivity approaches are designed according to disparate features and requirements of the network. The performance of DBCE is validated through extensive simulation experiments.