Deploying Sensor Networks With Guaranteed Fault Tolerance

We consider the problem of deploying or repairing a sensor network to guarantee a specified level of multipath connectivity (k-connectivity) between all nodes. Such a guarantee simultaneously provides fault tolerance against node failures and high overall network capacity (by the max-flow min-cut theorem). We design and analyze the first algorithms that place an almost-minimum number of additional sensors to augment an existing network into a k-connected network, for any desired parameter. Our algorithms have provable guarantees on the quality of the solution. Specifically, we prove that the number of additional sensors is within a constant factor of the absolute minimum, for any fixed k. We have implemented greedy and distributed versions of this algorithm, and demonstrate in simulation that they produce high-quality placements for the additional sensors.