Coverage Control for Mobile Sensor Networks with Multiplicative Measurement Errors and Limited Interaction Ranges

In this paper, the coverage control problem for heterogeneous mobile sensors is investigated with multiplicative measurement errors and limited interaction ranges. The aim is to minimize the largest value of travel time from the mobile sensor network to any point on the circle. To achieve the optimal coverage configuration by the networked mobile sensors on the circle cooperatively, a distributed coverage control law is proposed based on only the sensors' limited interaction ranges and the lower bounds on the multiplicative measurement errors. Then, this paper proves that the sensor network will be driven to a neighborhood of the optimal positions if the sensors' interaction ranges are larger than a given threshold. To evaluate the effect of multiplicative measurement errors on the performance of the proposed coverage control law, an upper bound on the difference between the limit of the coverage cost function and its optimal value is also provided. A simulation example is presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed coverage control law.