Obstacle-avoidance Connectivity Restoration for mobile sensor systems with local information

Mobility of the sensors play an important role in the distributed mobile sensor systems (MSS) compared to their fixed counterparts. The mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is often adopted in MSS to build up its topology. This infrastructure-free underlying network provides flexibility as well as vulnerability to the potential applications of MSS. One of the major thread is the network disconnections induced by the failure of certain mobile sensors. In order to address this problem we proposed an Obstacle-avoidance Connectivity Restoration Strategy (OCRS) that fully explores the mobility of the sensors to restore the network connectivity while avoiding any incoming convex obstacles. OCRS consists of an effective backup sensor selection algorithm and a gyroscopic based motion controller. To the best of our knowledge, OCRS is the first work towards the online connectivity restoration problems in the environment with random convex obstacles. The correctness and efficiency of OCRS are validated via simulation studies.