In this paper the coverage problem of a mobile sensor network subject to time-varying communication delays is investigated. Each sensor is required to move along a fixed closed curve. The goal is to minimize a coverage cost function which is defined as the largest response time from the sensor network to any point on the curve. The maximum velocities of the sensors are assumed to be different from each other. This results in different input saturation constraints on the sensors with first-order dynamics. It is shown that even if time-varying communication delays exist, low gain feedback can be also used to design distributed coverage control laws for the mobile sensors. When the sensors’ delays and their derivative are both upper bounded, the sensor network is guaranteed to arrive at the optimal configuration which minimizes the coverage cost function. Moreover, in this work the maximal allowable upper bound on the sensors’ delays can be increased by choosing a lower upper bound on the sensors’ low control gains. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed coverage control laws is verified by a numerical example.

本文研究了时变通信时延对移动传感器网络的覆盖问题。每个传感器都需要沿着固定的闭合曲线移动。目标是最大程度地降低覆盖成本函数，该函数定义为从传感器网络到曲线上任何点的最大响应时间。假定传感器的最大速度互不相同。这会导致具有一阶动态特性的传感器具有不同的输入饱和约束。结果表明，即使存在时变通信延迟，低增益反馈也可以用于设计移动传感器的分布式覆盖控制律。当传感器的延迟及其导数都达到上限时，保证传感器网络达到最佳配置，从而将覆盖成本函数降至最低。此外，在这项工作中，可以通过在传感器的低控制增益上选择一个较低的上限来增加传感器延迟的最大允许上限。最后，通过数值算例验证了所提出的覆盖控制律的有效性。