Relocation of hopping sensors

Hopping sensors are a class of mobile sensors whose mobility design are inspired by creatures such as grasshoppers. Such sensors are able to maintain mobility in harsh terrains but may lack movement accuracy of those sensors that are powered by wheels. We examine the opportunities and challenges for utilizing the mobility of low cost hopping sensors to ensure coverage and maintain energy efficiency within a sensing field. We focus on the problem of transporting a number of hopping sensors from multiple sources to a destination. Probabilistic methods are used to contain the movement inaccuracies along the hopping course. We also consider the impact of wind under an aerodynamic setting. Two transport schemes are designed to minimize the number of hops needed while considering other constraints, such as sustaining the capability of relocating sensors within the whole network. In one scheme we use upper and lower hopping limits to apply the network mobility constraints. The other scheme uses a balancing coefficient to construct a new optimization target to meet the requirement of path optimality and network mobility dynamically. Simulation results show that both schemes work well regardless of the wind factors, while the dynamic scheme is also shown to be resilient to topological changes of the network.