An autonomous maintenance algorithm for sensor networks subject to practical communication constraints

The paper studies the maintenance problem of wireless sensor networks subject to practical communication constraints. It is assumed that the locations of survival nodes, malfunctioning nodes, and obstacles are unknown a priori, but the target area of sensor networks to be repaired is known. An autonomous agent is adopted to search in the target area the survival nodes, acquire their information, avoid obstacles, and deploy new nodes to repair the network. The repairing procedure takes into account practical communication constraints and deploy new nodes one-at-a-time based on Voronoi diagram. The objective is to re-establish connectivity and coverage with less number of sensor nodes. Two simulations are conducted to validate the algorithm.