Fault repair schemes for static wireless sensor networks driven by an analytical energy dissipation model

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce three proactive maintenance strategies for static Wireless sensor Networks (WSNs) using a limited number of mobile maintainer robots: the Centralized Proactive Maintenance Strategy (CPMS), the Fixed Distributed Proactive Maintenance Strategy (FDPMS) and the Adaptive Distributed Proactive Maintenance Strategy (ADPMS). The proposed maintenance strategies are based on a simple analytical energy dissipation model to estimate the occurrence times of the expected sensor failures in the network. Once identified, the anticipated failures are replaced by the available robots before they happen. Simulation results have shown that CPMS gives the minimal network dysfunction time representing the interruption time of the service provided by the network. But, due to its significant signaling cost, we have remarked that CPMS can be deployed only in small scale WSNs. In large scale ones, we recommend using the ADPMS maintenance strategy. However, in particular cases, when sensor failures are uniformly distributed on the network map, FDPMS has given the best performances. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.