PALM: A Partition Avoidance Lazy Movement Protocol for Mobile Sensor Networks

The paper proposes a distributed partition avoidance lazy movement (PALM) protocol for mobile sensor networks (MSNs). In general, connectivity and coverage are two major factors to the success of a sensor network. Therefore, PALM takes both connectivity and coverage into account to avoid network partition and keep high sensing quality. Since sensor movement is the major source of energy consumption, thus, in order not to cause frequent movement, PALM triggers sensor movement only when the network has a risk of partition, but not when coverage holes appear. The paper proposes a sufficient condition of keeping a network connected. Based on the condition, PALM adopts the lazy movement policy for a sensor to determine when to move and uses the principles of an effective movement for a sensor to decide where to move. Accordingly, PALM can keep the network connected and can make the effective coverage as large as possible to maintain high sensing quality. In comparison with the related work, PALM can reduce the energy consumption and further extend the network lifetime due to the lazy movement policy and the principles of an effective movement. Simulation results also verify the advantages of the proposed protocol.