ZBFR: zone based failure recovery in WSNs by utilizing mobility and coverage overlapping

Wireless sensor networks are more prone to failures as compared to other traditional networks. The frequent faults and failures sometime create large holes causing loss of sensing and connectivity coverage in the network. In present work, a zone based failure detection and recovery scheme is presented to reliably handle such node failures. We first propose a consensus and agreement based approach to elect a suitable monitor node called as zone monitor (ZM). ZM is responsible for coordinating failure recovery activities and maintaining desired coverage within a zone. In order to overcome failure overhead due to false failure detection, a consensus is carried out amongst neighboring nodes of a suspicious node to confirm the correct status with high accuracy. On confirmation of a node failure, the impact of resulting hole on coverage is analyzed and if impact exceeds beyond a particular threshold, a recovery process is initiated. The recovery process utilizes backup nodes having overlapping sensing coverage with failed node and may also relocate some nodes. Firstly a backup node is probed and activated if available. If no backup node is found, the solution strives to recover coverage jointly by recursively relocating some mobile nodes and probing backup nodes. The proposed scheme is analyzed and validated through NS-2 based simulation experiments.