Energy efficient cellular automaton based algorithms for mobile wireless sensor networks

We design new cellular automaton based algorithms to improve coverage in a network with mobile sensors. The algorithms can be useful in applications where sensors are initially deployed in one place and need to disperse to the environment autonomously, or in situations where in certain areas sensors may be destroyed (e.g. due to a natural disaster), and the sensors need to use their mobility in order to restore coverage. We propose a cellular automaton model that divides the neighborhood of a cell into four (North West, North East, South West and South East) quadrants and the sensors try to find out the directions where they can move to increase the coverage. We compared our model with a previous model for different initial configurations and have found that our model reaches a comparable coverage more quickly. Our algorithms use two parameter values to guide the movements of the sensors. Especially with the best choices of the parameter values, our algorithms require the sensors to make considerably fewer atomic movements than the earlier algorithm. For mobile sensor networks, energy consumption is largely determined by the amount of movement, and minimizing movement will increase the life time of the network.