Coverage Maximization and Energy Conservation for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks: A Two Phase Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

In mobile wireless sensor networks (WSN) coverage can be enhanced by moving the sensors so that a better arrangement is achieved. However, movement is a high energy consumption task. Therefore, in this paper besides coverage, the cost of moving the sensors is also taken into account. Both objectives are tackled in separate phases with coverage maximization in the first phase while energy conservation in the second phase. The coverage is optimized by rearranging the sensors´ position while the energy is conserved by minimizing the maximum distance moved by the sensors. The algorithm performance is evaluated through simulation using different WSNs. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm increases the coverage and reduces the energy consumption significantly.