A Binary Consensus Approach to Decentralized Coordination of Nonholonomic Sensor Networks

In this paper we address a coverage control problem where a team of mobile sensors covers a chemical concentration defined by a distributed density function. The mobile sensors position themselves sub-optimally such that the larger the concentration over a specific area the greater the number of sensors over the area. We show the Lyapunov stability of an adaptive and decentralized version of the coverage control. This new coverage approach assumes nonholonomic sensors that synchronize themselves through a binary consensus protocol. The binary consensus protocol allows the compression of the data that every mobile sensor shares with its neighbors. Furthermore, we provide sufficient conditions to guarantee an uniform ultimate bound for the system when in presence of time-varying distributed density functions. The stability analysis of the coverage control is verified through simulation results.