Path Planning of Mobile Robot in Partitioned Wireless Sensor Networks

Recently, research interest has increased in the design, development, and deployment of mobile agent systems for high-level inference and surveillance in a wireless sensor network (WSN). A novel data-collection algorithm using a mobile robot to acquire sensed data from a partitioned/islanded wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is proposed. This algorithm permits the improvement of data-collecting performance by the base station by identifying the locations of partitioned/islanded WSNs and planning a path for a mobile robot to the desired location. To identify the locations of the partitioned/islanded WSNs, a tree-based search algorithm is proposed. Accordingly, the navigation strategy of the robot can be scheduled based on time and location. With the proposed algorithm, the mobile robot can collect the sensed data from the partitioned/islanded WSNs. Therefore, the efficiency of sensed data collected by the base station in partitioned/islanded WSNs is improved. Through simulation, the results show that the collecting strategies proposed can improve sensed data-collecting performance in partitioned or islanded WSNs.