A fault tolerance approach to topology control in Distributed Sensor Networks

A Distributed Sensor Network (DSN) that can provide access to information anytime, anywhere by collecting, processing, analyzing and disseminating data. Thus, the network actively participates in creating a smart environment. Distributed Sensor Networks promise to revolutionize sensing in a wide range of application domains. This is because of their reliability, accuracy, flexibility, cost effectiveness and ease of deployment of nodes in topology of DSN. Smart sensors can offer vigilant surveillance and can detect and collect data concerning any sign of machines failure, earthquakes, floods and even a terrorist attack energy efficiency, topology control and fault-tolerance are the most important issues in the development of next-generation DSN. Fault tolerance is the ability of a system to deliver a desired level of functionality in presence of faults in the topology. Topology control as a low level service governs communication among all nodes and is hence the primary target for increasing connectivity and saving energy. In this work, we have proposed two models for fault detection and fault recovery to achieve fault tolerance in topology. The proposed fault detection model is used to detect faults at node level (checking node´s energy) and network level faults (link failure and packet error). The proposed fault recovery model is used to achieve fault tolerance by adjusting the topology of the randomly deployed sensor nodes. Finally, we have evaluated the performance parameters for the proposed scheme.