FtCFt: a fault-tolerant coverage preserving strategy for face topology-based wireless sensor networks

Although researchers have investigated multiple facets of fault tolerance, majority of them have overlooked fault tolerance in face structured WSNs. Motivated by this, we propose a Fault-Tolerant Coverage Preserving Strategy for Face Topology-based WSNs (FtCFt). Unlike existing methods of recovering failures by merging the adjacent faces, we propose a coverage-aware node replacement method to replace the failing node with a suitable alternate node. This is significant because a mobile target will go undetected, and no evidence of it can be acquired until it leaves the hole region and is sensed by a node. FtCFt offers fault tolerance by incorporating node self-check and link-check strategies that works in conjunction with one of its mobile target tracking applications. Unlike existing works, the proposed restoration algorithm effectively repairs and restores the face structure to ensure network coverage and connectivity. Simulation results reveal that FtCFt improves coverage, quality of service and WSN liferime.