Mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) will enable information systems to gather detailed information about the environment on an unprecedented scale. These selforganising, distributed networks of sensors, processors and actuators that are capable of movement have a broad range of potential applications, including military reconnaissance, surveillance, planetary exploration and geophysical mapping. In many of the foreseen applications a certain geometric pattern will be required for the task. Hence, algorithms for maintaining the geometric pattern of an MWSN are investigated. In many tasks such as land mine detection, a group of nodes arranged in a line must provide continuous coverage between each end of the formation. Thus, we present algorithms for maintaining the geometric pattern of a group of nodes arranged in a line. An MWSN may also need to form a geometric pattern without assistance from the user. In military reconnaissance, for example, the nodes will be dropped onto the battlefield from a plane and land at random positions. The nodes will be expected to arrange themselves into a predetermined formation in order to perform a specific task. Thus, we present algorithms for forming a circle and regular polygon from a given set of random positions. The algorithms are distributed and use no communication between the nodes to minimise energy consumption. Unlike past studies of geometric problems where algorithms are either tested in simulations where each node has global knowledge of all the other nodes or implemented on a small number of robots, the robustness of our algorithms has been studied with simulations that model the sensor system in detail. / The nodes locate their neighbours using simulated vision where a ray-tracer is used to generate images of a model of the scene that would be captured by each node's cameras. The simulations demonstrate that the algorithms are robust against random errors in the sensors and actuators. Even though the nodes had incomplete knowledge of the positions of other nodes due to occlusion, they were still able to perform the assigned tasks.

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a group of spatially dispersed sensors that monitor the physical conditions of the environment and collect data at a central location. Sensor deployment is one of the main design aspects of WSNs as this a ffects network coverage. In general, WSN deployment methods fall into two categories: planned deployment and random deployment. This thesis considers planned sensor deployment of a Mobile Wireless Sensor Network (MWSN), which is defined as selectively deciding the locations of the mobile sensors under the given constraints to optimize the coverage of the network. Metaheuristic algorithms are powerful tools for the modeling and optimization of problems. The Krill Herd Algorithm (KHA) is a new nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithm which can be used to solve the sensor deployment problem. A Multi-Agent System (MAS) is a system that contains multiple interacting agents. These agents are autonomous entities that interact with their environment and direct their activity towards achieving speci c goals. Agents can also learn or use their knowledge to accomplish a mission. Multi-agent systems can solve problems that are very difficult or even impossible for monolithic systems to solve. In this work, a modification of KHA is proposed which incorporates MAS to obtain a Multi-Agent Krill Herd Algorithm (MA-KHA). To test the performance of the proposed method, five benchmark global optimization problems are used. Numerical results are presented which show that MA-KHA performs better than the KHA by finding better solutions. The proposed MA-KHA is also employed to solve the sensor deployment problem. Simulation results are presented which indicate that the agent-agent interactions in MA-KHA improves the WSN coverage in comparison with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), the Firefly Algorithm (FA), and the KHA. / Graduate

The promise of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is the autonomous collaboration of a collection of sensors to accomplish some specific goals which a single sensor cannot offer. Basically, sensor networking serves a range of applications by providing the raw data as fundamentals for further analyses and actions. The imprecision of the collected data could tremendously mislead the decision-making process of sensor-based applications, resulting in an ineffectiveness or failure of the application objectives. Due to inherent WSN characteristics normally spoiling the raw sensor readings, many research efforts attempt to improve the accuracy of the corrupted or “dirty” sensor data. The dirty data need to be cleaned or corrected. However, the developed data cleaning solutions restrict themselves to the scope of static WSNs where deployed sensors would rarely move during the operation. Nowadays, many emerging applications relying on WSNs need the sensor mobility to enhance the application efficiency and usage flexibility. The location of deployed sensors needs to be dynamic. Also, each sensor would independently function and contribute its resources. Sensors equipped with vehicles for monitoring the traffic condition could be depicted as one of the prospective examples. The sensor mobility causes a transient in network topology and correlation among sensor streams. Based on static relationships among sensors, the existing methods for cleaning sensor data in static WSNs are invalid in such mobile scenarios. Therefore, a solution of data cleaning that considers the sensor movements is actively needed. This dissertation aims to improve the quality of sensor data by considering the consequences of various trajectory relationships of autonomous mobile sensors in the system. First of all, we address the dynamic network topology due to sensor mobility. The concept of virtual sensor is presented and used for spatio-temporal selection of neighboring sensors to help in cleaning sensor data streams. This method is one of the first methods to clean data in mobile sensor environments. We also study the mobility pattern of moving sensors relative to boundaries of sub-areas of interest. We developed a belief-based analysis to determine the reliable sets of neighboring sensors to improve the cleaning performance, especially when node density is relatively low. Finally, we design a novel sketch-based technique to clean data from internal sensors where spatio-temporal relationships among sensors cannot lead to the data correlations among sensor streams.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:06:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 5631.pdf: 1787133 bytes, checksum: c363525148fa6a5fe71608e7a8ffcf4c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-09-28 / Universidade Federal de Sao Carlos / The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks (MWSNs) are being increasingly used by different applications, such as monitoring of animals, monitoring of vital signs, environmental monitoring, surveillance and protection of critical infrastructure, leaking gas, among many others. Some of these applications are already making use of mobile sensor nodes, such as underwater monitoring, precision agriculture, among many others. Due to restricted resources of sensor nodes, especially in relation to energy consumption, the development for solutions based on WSN and MWSN becomes limited. The use of mobile sensor nodes, which typically has more computational resources, power and communication, can help to reduce the energy consumption of fixed nodes, increasing the lifetime of the network. Networks that use mobile sensor nodes (fixed and mobile) with different types of hardware are called Wireless Sensor Networks Heterogeneous Mobile. This paper presents the RAHMoN (Routing Algorithm for Heterogeneous Mobile Networks), which makes use of data aggregation technique to reduce the traffic transmissions on the network, hierarchy of nodes (clustering), and use of sensor nodes (fixed and mobile) that collaborate to deliver data to a sink node at high speed. In RAHMoN, the network is configured using the techniques of inundation (flooding) and inundation reverse (reverse flooding) to collect the fixed position of sensor nodes and form an adjacency matrix. This matrix helps to build routes for data delivery to the sink and is stored in the mobile sensor nodes. Results show that our solution can guarantee a high packages delivery rate, low latency and reduce the delay of packet delivery. The solution was compared with the WHISPER, present in the literature and also focused on the delivery of data to sink node at high speed. / As Redes de sensores sem Fio (RSSFs) e Redes de Sensores Sem Fio Móveis (RSSFMs) estão sendo cada vez mais utilizadas por diferentes aplicações, tais como: monitoramento de animais, monitoramento de sinais vitais, monitoramento ambiental, vigilância e proteção de infraestruturas críticas, vazamento de gás, dentre inúmeras outras. Algumas dessas aplicações já fazem uso de nós sensores móveis. Devido aos recursos restritos dos nós sensores, principalmente em relação ao consumo energético, o desenvolvimento de soluções baseadas em RSSF e RSSFM torna-se limitado. O uso de nós sensores móveis, que tipicamente têm mais recursos computacionais, de energia e de comunicação, pode ajudar a reduzir o consumo de energia dos nós fixos, aumentando o tempo de vida da rede. Redes que utilizam nós sensores (fixos e móveis) com diferentes tipos de hardware são denominadas Redes de Sensores Sem Fio Móvel Heterogênea. Neste trabalho é apresentado o RAHMoN (Routing Algorithm for Heterogeneous Mobile Networks), que faz uso da técnica de agregação de dados para reduzir o tráfego de transmissões na rede, da hierarquização de nós (clustering), da utilização de nós sensores (fixos e móveis) e de um sink em alta velocidade. No RAHMoN, a rede é configurada utilizando flooding e flooding reverse para coletar a posição dos nós sensores fixos e formar uma matriz de adjacência. Essa matriz auxilia na construção de rotas durante a entrega dos dados para o sink e será armazenada nos nós sensores móveis. Resultados de avaliação mostram que a nossa solução consegue garantir uma alta taxa de entrega de pacotes, diminuir a latência e reduzir o atraso de entrega dos pacotes. A solução foi comparada com o WHISPER, presente na literatura e também voltado à entrega de dados para o nó sink em alta velocidade.