A Novel Distributed Mobility Protocol for Dynamic Coverage in Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a novel mobility protocol for mobile node navigation in a hybrid sensor network consisting of both static and mobile nodes to improve the dynamic coverage. Use of mobile nodes in sensor networks for coverage improvement is suggested in recent research. However, most of the existing literature on hybrid sensor networks considered the use of node mobility at the deployment stage in which nodes do not move after the initial deployment. In this paper, our focus is on efficiently managing the node mobility to provide dynamic coverage in hybrid sensor networks compensating the lack of coverage provided by static nodes. The key feature of the proposed mobility protocol is that, mobile nodes are directed to move to maximize the coverage-time of the uncovered area by static nodes. The proposed mobility protocol can be implemented distributively by collaborating among mobile and static nodes locally. The effectiveness of the proposed mobility protocol is shown in terms of the presence probability matrix and coverage-time.