Restoring Connectivity of Mobile Robotic Sensor Networks While Avoiding Obstacles

In many mission critical applications of mobile robotic sensor networks (MRSNs), the intersensor collaboration requires reliable application-level coordination based on strong network connectivity with some suggested solutions. In practice, however, the disturbing obstacles and harsh interferences the connectivity of the MRSN can be easily compromised, especially when the failure of some critical sensors results in disintegration of the network into two or more disjoint segments. Existing connectivity restoration schemes fail to perform under such harsh working conditions as they overlook an important fact that sensors may encounter obstacles during the relocation. Our obstacle-avoiding connectivity restoration strategy (OCRS) proposed method addresses this problem using a fully exploring mobility technique avoiding any incoming convex obstacle conditions. For which a backup selection algorithm (BSA) proactively determine the cut-vertex sensors within the network and assigns a backup sensor to each cut-vertex node. Then, a selected backup sensor avoiding obstacles uses a gyroscopic force controller displaced restoring the disturbed connectivity. Extensive simulation experiments verify OCRS capability to restore connectivity with guaranteed collision avoidance, and also to outperform contemporary schemes in terms of message complexity and traveling distance.