An adaptive coverage algorithm for large-scale mobile sensor networks

Coverage has been an active research area in mobile sensor networks. For a randomly placed large-scale sensor network, sensor nodes would most probably be distributed asymmetrically, and it requires the coverage algorithm to do with the diffusion and contraction of the network. Most of the existed algorithms are on the assumption that sensor nodes are initially densely distributed or the states of the network coverage are known to all the nodes, which does not meet all application scenarios. This paper proposes a new adaptive coverage algorithm based on the combination of boundary contraction and random repulsion. It works well on the scenarios of the asymmetrical initial distribution, the isotropic sensor nodes, and that only the coverage states in communication range being known by nodes. Simulation results show that the algorithm realizes both the diffusion and contraction of the sensor network, and that the deployed nodes tend to be uniformly distributed.