Self-deployment algorithms for mobile sensors on a ring

  • Authors:

  • Paola Flocchini;Giuseppe Prencipe;Nicola Santoro

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, Canada;Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Italy;School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

  • Venue:
  • ALGOSENSORS'06 Proceedings of the Second international conference on Algorithmic Aspects of Wireless Sensor Networks
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

We consider the self-deployment problem in a ring for a network of identical sensors: starting from some initial random placement in the ring, the sensors in the network must move, in a purely decentralized and distributed fashion, so to reach in finite time a state of static equilibrium in which they evenly cover the ring. A self-deployment algorithm is exact if within finite time the sensors reach a static uniform configuration: the distance between any two consecutive sensors along the ring is the same, d; the self-deployment algorithm is ε-approximate if the distance between two consecutive sensors is between d − ε and d + ε. We prove that exact self-deployment is impossible if the sensors do not share a common orientation of the ring. We then consider the problem in an oriented ring. We prove that if the sensors know the desired final distance d, then exact self-deployment is possible. Otherwise, we present another protocol based on a very simple strategy and prove that it is ε -approximate for any chosen ε 0. Our results show that a shared orientation of the ring is an important computational and complexity factor for a network of mobile sensors operating in a ring.