Mobility-Assisted Spatiotemporal Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) deployed for mission-critical applications face the fundamental challenge of meeting stringent spatiotemporal performance requirements using nodes with limited sensing capacity. Although advance network planning and dense node deployment may initially achieve the required performance, they often fail to adapt to the unpredictability of physical reality. This paper explores efficient use of mobile sensors to address the limitations of static WSNs in target detection. The authors propose a data fusion model that enables static and mobile sensors to effectively collaborate in target detection. An optimal sensor movement scheduling algorithm is developed to minimize the total moving distance of sensors while achieving a set of spatiotemporal performance requirements including high detection probability, low system false alarm rate and bounded detection delay.