Round-table negotiation for fast restoration of connectivity in partitioned wireless sensor networks

Abstract This paper addresses the problem of restoration of connectivity in wireless sensor networks after multiple simultaneous node failures. Such failures of multiple nodes may split the network into several clusters. These clusters are unaware of their own size, surviving nodes and links as well as size and location of other survivor clusters. A distributed and autonomous approach of reconnecting disjoint clusters in a short time is proposed, in which each survivor cluster undergoes a self-discovery process where it compiles information of connected survivors and then sends a negotiator to participate in a round table negotiation and decision-making process. All such negotiators exchange information and decide upon reconnection paths between clusters through known dead node locations and then assign nodes to be deployed on those paths, using available nodes. The negotiators then return to their respective clusters, convey the decision and the reconnection process is carried out. Analytical results of the self-discovery process have been obtained and simulation results on a large network are presented to illustrate the process. It is shown through a detailed comparison with existing methods that the proposed approach achieves reconnection in significantly lower time and compares favorably with respect to other performance metrics as well.