Energy-Aware, Self-Deploying Approaches for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper proposes self-deploying approaches for sensor networks. The gravitational field (GF) and the radioactive decay (RD) are used to model the repulsion forces between sensor nodes. The Received Signal Strength (RSS) is transformed to the repulsion force for computing the next move distance and direction. The GF approach reduces the power consumption on communication overheads while the RD approach reduces the physical move distance to save energy. A mechanism called as distance-force ratio (DFR) is proposed to improve the oscillation moving problem which sensor nodes move back and forth during the deploying progress. Furthermore, a hybrid approach which combines two models to save energy on mobility and communication is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed approaches can reduce the energy spent on mobility and the communication overheads. The hybrid approach inherits the benefits of both models and has well performance on the effective move ratio, the move attempts, coverage, and the deploying time.