A Routing Algorithm for Extending Mobile Sensor Network’s Lifetime using Connectivity and Target Coverage

In this paper, we propose an approach to improving the network lifetime by enhancing Network CONnectivity (NCON) and Target COVerage (TCOV) in randomly deployed Mobile Sensor Network (MSN). Generally, MSN refers to the collection of independent and scattered sensors with the capability of being mobile, if need be. Target coverage, network connectivity, and network lifetime are the three most critical issues of MSN. Any MSN formed with a set of randomly distributed sensors should be able to select and successfully activate some subsets of nodes so that they completely monitor or cover the entire Area of Interest (AOI). Network connectivity, on the other hand ensures that the nodes are connected for the full lifetime of the network so that collection and reporting of data to the sink node are kept uninterrupted through the sensor nodes. Keeping these three critical aspects into consideration, here we propose Socratic Random Algorithm (SRA) that ensures efficient target coverage and network connectivity alongside extending the lifetime of the network. The proposed method has been experimentally compared with other existing alternative mechanisms taking appropriate performance metrics into consideration. Our simulation results and analysis show that SRA performs significantly better than the existing schemes in the recent literature.