C2AP: Coverage-aware and Connectivity-constrained Actor Positioning in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

In addition to the miniaturized sensor nodes, wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) employ significantly more capable actor nodes that can perform application specific actions to deal with events detected and reported by the sensors. Since these actions can be taken at any spot within the monitored area, the actors should be carefully placed in order to provide maximal coverage. Moreover, the actors often coordinate among themselves in order to arbitrate tasks and thus inter-actor connectivity is usually a requirement. In this paper, we propose a distributed actor positioning algorithm that maximizes the coverage of actors without violating the connectivity requirement. The approach applies repelling forces between neighboring actors, similar to molecular particles in Physics, in order to spread them in the region. However, the movement of each actor is restricted in order to maintain the connectivity of the inter-actor network. The performance of the approach is validated through simulations.