Application-Oriented Fault Detection and Recovery Algorithm for Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in applications of wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs). In WSANs, maintaining interactor connectivity is of vital concern in order to reach application level. Failure of a critical actor may partition the inter-actor network into disjoint segments. This paper proposed an application-oriented fault detection and recovery algorithm (AFDR), a novel distributed algorithm to reestablish connectivity. AFDR identifies critical actors and designates backups for them. A backup actor detects the critical node failure and initiates a recovery process via moving to the optimal position. The purpose of AFDR is to satisfy application requirements, reduce recovery overhead, and limit the impact of critical node failure on coverage and connectivity to the utmost. The effectiveness of AFDR is validated through simulation experiments.