ORCID: Opportunistic Reconnectivity for Network Management in the Presence of Dumb Nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this article, we propose a scheme named opportunistic reconnectivity in the presence of dumb nodes (ORCID), which is adaptive and can be used for the formation of a network, opportunistically, while managing network connectivity, in a wireless sensor network. A “dumb” node can sense its surroundings but is unable to transmit data to other nodes at a particular time instant, due to its shrinkage in communication range in the presence of adverse environmental effects such as temperature, rainfall, and fog. The nature of connectivity re-establishment problem witnessed in these scenarios differs from the normal ones, thereby making this problem interesting and distinctive. In ORCID, we use a single-leader-multiple-followers Stackelberg game, where a dumb node acts as the leader and the other nodes within the adjusted communication range of the dumb node act as followers. The leaders try to establish connectivity with any of the activated nodes in the network by optimally adjusting their power levels using the proposed network management scheme so that the communication range is also adjusted. On the other hand, the followers try to be connected with the leaders by maximizing their utility.