Mobile Sensor Networks: Bounds on Capacity and Complexity of Realizability

Abstract: We develop the mathematical theory of a model, constructed by C. Gu, I. Downes, O. Gnawali, and L. Guibas, of networks that diffuse continuously acquired information from mobile sensor nodes. We prove new results on the maximum, minimum, and expected capacity of their model of combinatorial and geometric mobile sensor networks, as well as modified versions of these models. We also give complexity results for the problem of deciding when a combinatorial mobile sensor network is generated from a geometric mobile sensor network. A more detailed description of the concerned concepts is the following. In a restricted combinatorial mobile sensor network (RCMSN), there are n sensors that continuously receive and store information from outside. Every two sensors communicate exactly once, and at an event when two sensors communicate, they receive and store additionally all information the other has stored. In a geometric mobile sensor network (GMSN), a type of RCMSN, the sensors move with constant speed on a straight line and communicate whenever a pair meet. For the purpose of analysis, all information received by two sensors before a communication event and after the previous communication events for each of them is collected into one information packet, and the capacity is defined as the ratio of the average number of sensors reached by the packets and the total number of sensors.