Partitioning Detection and Connectivity Restoration Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Actor Networks

Recently, Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks have been receiving a growing attention from the research community because of their suitability for critical applications. Maintaining inter-actor connectivity becomes extremely crucial in such situations where actors have to quickly plan optimal coordinated response to detected events. Failure of critical actor partitions the inter-actor network into disjoint segments, and thus hinders the network operation. Autonomous detection and rapid recovery procedures are highly desirable in such case. This paper presents PCR, a novel distributed partitioning detection and connectivity restoration algorithm. PCR proactively identifies critical actors based on local topological information and designate appropriate backup nodes (preferably non-critical) to handle their failure.