  Mobile sensor networks (MSNs) have emerged from the interaction between
mobile robotics and wireless sensor networks. MSNs can be deployed in harsh
environments, where failures in some nodes can partition MSNs into disconnected
network segments or reduce the coverage area. A k-connected network can
tolerate at least k-1 arbitrary node failures without losing its connectivity.
In this study, we present a coverage-aware distributed k-connectivity
maintenance (restoration) algorithm that generates minimum-cost movements of
active nodes after a node failure to preserve a persistent k value subject to a
coverage conservation criterion. The algorithm accepts a coverage conservation
ratio (as a trade-off parameter between coverage and movements) and facilitates
coverage with the generated movements according to this value. Extensive
simulations and testbed experiments reveal that the proposed algorithm restores
k-connectivity more efficiently than the existing restoration algorithms.
Furthermore, our algorithm can be utilized to maintain k-connectivity without
sacrificing the coverage, significantly.
