NeTS-NOSS: Mobility-assisted Network Deployment and Maintenance

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Mobile sensor networks in which some nodes can move (on their own or through the agency of others) combine advanced concepts in perception, communication, and control to create computational systems capable of interacting in meaningful ways with the physical environment. We are motivated by the vision of providing support for communication, monitoring, and surveillance over areas that lack the infrastructure for traditional computation and communication (e.g. protection and monitoring for large geographical areas such as the Alaska pipeline). By deploying a sensor network along such areas (using humans or flying drones) one can maintain a global view of key attributes of the environment. This research focuses on the following three goals within the broad area of synergy between communication and mobility in sensor networks: 1. Deployment - Distributed algorithms for mobility-assisted network deployment with desired topological properties, 2. Mobility-based Topology Control - Distributed algorithms for adaptive self-organization of the network nodes to support desired information flow, and 3. Link-level Communication Modeling - the development and analysis of a suite of localized algorithms that monitor the connectivity properties of the network locally and give global link characterization for the entire network. We expect this research to impact the deployment and maintenance of real-world sensor-actuator networks in the future via a deep understanding of the fundamental problems outlined above. The educational impact of the project will be the creation of a multi-purpose teaching module using the experimental systems developed in the proposed research.