Distributed in-network path planning for sensor network navigation in dynamic hazardous environments

Wireless sensor networks can be employed to provide distributed real‐time navigation instructions to users attempting to travel in hazardous environments. In this work, we propose a distributed path planning algorithm for sensor network navigation in dynamic hazardous environments. Using geographic or virtual coordinates of sensors and based on a partial reversal method for directed acyclic graphs (DAG), our algorithm constructs a distributed in‐network directed navigation graph, where each source sensor is guaranteed to have at least one desired directed path to one destination sensor. When the hazardous environment changes due to its dynamic nature, path replanning does not need to reconfigure most of the directed links in the graph unaffected by the changes. Correctness of our algorithm is proved and extensive simulation results demonstrate that the constructed navigation graph provides near‐optimal navigation paths for users, successfully adapts to dynamic hazardous environments, and requires very low communication overhead for maintenance, when compared to other navigation graphs constructed by existing algorithms that use frequent or periodic flooding. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. A distributed path planning algorithm is proposed for sensor network navigation in dynamic hazardous environments. Using geographic or virtual coordinates of sensors and based on a partial reversal method for directed acyclic graphs, the algorithm constructs a distributed in‐network directed navigation graph, where each source sensor is guaranteed to have at least one desired directed path to one destination sensor. The algorithm enables path replanning that adapts the graph to dynamic environments without reconfiguring most of the directed links.