Self-Organizing Mobility Control in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks Based on Virtual Electrostatic Interactions

Abstract

This paper introduces a new mobility control method for surveillance applications of wireless sensor and actor networks. The proposed method is based on virtual electrostatic forces which act on actors to coordinate their movements. The definition of virtual forces is inspired by Coulomb’s law from physics. Each actor calculates the virtual forces independently based on known locations of its neighbours and predetermined borders of the monitored area. The virtual forces generate movements of actors. This approach enables effective deployment of actors at the initial stage as well as adaptation of actors’ placement to variable conditions during execution of the surveillance task without the need of any central controller. Effectiveness of the introduced method was experimentally evaluated in a simulation environment. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method enables more effective organization of the actors’ mobility than state-of-the-art approaches.