A convex optimization method for improved coverage in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Agents in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET) typically have no knowledge of the environment that they are to be deployed in nor where they will be located. All information a mobile agent has access to is provided locally by other mobile agents within its communication range. Due to the nature of random deployment, agents may be clustered together which creates coverage holes in the network. Most of the existing work that focuses on improving area coverage deals with Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) where wireless connections between individual agents are not a concern when moving the agents. This work proposes a method to improve area coverage while preserving communication links between the mobile agents. A distributed consensus protocol based on Voronoi tessellation is introduced. A constrained convex optimization is then used to solve the distributed consensus protocol to determine an optimal position for a node inside of its Voronoi cell without losing communication with neighbors. This work is based on the belief that a node covers the most area when it covers most or all of its Voronoi cell. The convex optimization is then tested on a small network of agents and it is shown that area coverage is improved.