Covering a 3D flat surface with autonomous and mobile wireless sensor nodes

International audienceWireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used in a wide range of applications due to their monitoring and tracking abilities. Depending on the applications goals, sensor nodes are deployed either in a two dimensional (2D) area or in a three-dimensional (3D) area. In addition, WSN deployment can be either in a distributed or a centralized manner. In this paper, we are interested in a fully distributed deployment of WSN in several 3D-flat-surface configurations using autonomous and mobile nodes. Our goal is to ensure full 3D flat surfaces coverage and maintain network connectivity for these surfaces. To reach our goal we propose 3D-DVFA-FSC, a distributed deployment algorithm based on virtual forces strategy to move sensor nodes over different 3D-flat-surface shapes. Simulation results show that 3D-DVFA-FSC provides a full coverage rate regardless of the 3D-flat-surface configuration while maintaining network connectivity