Distributed Coverage Control and Data Collection With Mobile Sensor Networks

We study wireless sensor networks whose objective is to control the locations of mobile nodes so as to maximize the probability of detecting randomly occurring events in a mission space and to extract information from data sources, when detected, with maximal effectiveness. The control system for the mission is composed of three components executed in parallel on sensor nodes: coverage control, data source detection, and data collection. In order to maximize the joint detection probability of random events in a given mission space, we build upon a previously developed distributed gradient-based coverage control scheme to include three additional capabilities: allowing polygonal obstacles, including limited sensing field-of-view constraints, and preserving network connectivity through a provably correct algorithm using each node's routing information. In order to combine coverage and data collection, we formulate and solve a modified optimization problem with these two objectives. The interactions among the three components of the sensor network control system are discussed and simulation examples are presented to illustrate our results.