Handling Failures of Static Sensor Nodes in Wireless Sensor Network by Use of Mobile Sensors

Node failures in Wireless Sensor Networks composed by static sensor nodes are common due to the nature of the sensor devices and the usually harsh environments in which they are deployed. Node failures can diminish the performance of the network as a whole, thus affecting its functionality in delivering the desired services. For instance, significant regions can become uncovered due to failure of several nearby nodes. This paper reports a study about the use of mobile sensor nodes acting in cooperation with static ones in order to fill gaps created by faulty static nodes. The proposed fault handling mechanism presents alternative policies with pros and cons, depending on the user priorities imposed to the system and the occurrence of failures. A discussion about this topic is presented based on results obtained by simulation of the proposed mechanisms.