Decentralized Control of Mobile Sensor Networks for Asymptotically Optimal Blanket Coverage Between Two Boundaries

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industrial informatics Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 365 - 376
• Main Authors: Cheng, T. M., Savkin, A. V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01-02-2013; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithms; Asymptotic properties; Blanket coverage; Blanketing; Boundaries; decentralized control; Distributed control; Informatics; Lattices; Mobile communication; Mobile computing; mobile sensor networks; networked control systems; Networks; Optimization; Robot sensing systems; sensor deployment; Sensors
• ISSN: 1551-3203; 1941-0050
• DOI: 10.1109/TII.2012.2218819

We study a problem of blanket coverage by employing a network of self-deployed, autonomous mobile sensors or agents. The coverage problem is to drive the mobile sensor network to form a sensor lattice that completely covers a two-dimensional (2-D) region between two boundaries. In particular, the sensors form into the so-called triangular lattice pattern, and it is optimal in terms of the minimum number of sensors required for complete coverage of a bounded 2-D set. A distributed motion coordination algorithm is proposed for the mobile sensors to address the coverage problem. The algorithm is developed based on some simple consensus algorithms that only rely on local information. To illustrate the proposed algorithm, numerical simulations have been carried out for a number of scenarios.