Self-deployment of mobile sensors on a ring

Mobile sensors can self-deploy in a purely decentralized and distributed fashion, so to reach in finite time a state of static equilibrium in which they cover uniformly the environment. We consider the self-deployment problem in a ring (e.g., a circular rim); in particular we investigate under what conditions the problem is solvable by a collection of identical sensors without a global coordinate system, however capable of determining the location (in their local coordinate system) of the other sensors within a fixed distance (called visibility radius). A self-deployment is exact if within finite time the distance between any two consecutive sensors along the ring is the same, d; it is -approximate if within finite time the distance between two consecutive sensors is between d - and d + . We prove that exact self-deployment is impossible if the sensors do not share a common orientation of the ring. This impossibility result holds even if the sensors have unlimited memory of the past,...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: TCS
• Authors: Paola Flocchini, Giuseppe Prencipe, Nicola Santoro
• Keywords: Coordinate System, Finite Time, Sensors, TCS 2008, Theoretical Computer Science