¡@

Most wireless sensor networks consist of a large number of static, low-power, short-lived, and unreliable sensors. In this paper, we considered sensor networks consisting of both static and mobile nodes. Integrating both types of devices enables new applications, such as nodes replacement, hole and partition recovery, and autonomous deployment and redeployment. We designed a smart mobile robot and implemented an application of nodes replacement to demonstrate its use, via our nodes replacement algorithm. In this algorithm, the mobile robots can navigate towards low-energy sensor nodes and replace them automatically, with new sensor nodes, having no location information. The navigation algorithm is based on received signal strength between the mobile robot and the communicating node. The experimental results confirm that the mobile robots successfully achieved their assigned tasks.

Keywords: mobile robot, mobile sensor, navigation algorithms, sensor networks, wireless networks

Retrieve PDF document (200803_05.pdf)

Received December 19, 2005; revised March 23, 2006; accepted April 19, 2006.
Communicated by Yu-Chee Tseng.
^*This work was supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C. under grants No. NSC 94-2213- E-008-023 and NSC-96-2752-E-007-003-PAE.
^* The preliminary version has appeared in IEEE International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communication WiMob¡¦2005.