Semi-flocking-controlled mobile sensor networks for dynamic area coverage and multiple target tracking

Mobile sensor networks (MSNs) can provide sensing coverage to large areas of interest. Area coverage and target tracking capabilities of MSNs are heavily depending on their motion control and coordination mechanisms. Many existing MSN motion control algorithms ignore or poorly utilize the available information from their operating environment, thus lead to unsatisfactory monitoring performances. This paper proposes a fully distributed semi-flocking algorithm which enables mobile nodes to self-organize themselves based on mobility and sensing information via information exchanges among nearby nodes. A distributed mechanism is designed to maximize area coverage and target tracking performances of MSNs. Mobile nodes perform evaluations based on received information and switch between searching and tracking modes. Behaviors of MSNs controlled by the proposed algorithm are studied under different levels of information exchanges. Our study shows that the proposed semi-flocking algorithm is capable of delivering desirable area coverage and target tracking performances in MSNs.