TwinsNet: A Cooperative MIMO Mobile Sensor Network

A distributed sensor network with mobility provides an ideal system platform for surveillance and for search and rescue applications. We consider a system design consisting of a set of autonomous robots communicating with each other and with a base station to provide image and other sensor data. A robot-mounted sensor which detects interesting information coordinates with other mobile robots in its vicinity to stream its data back to the base station in a robust and energy-efficient manner. The system is partitioned into twin sub-networks in such a way that any transmitting sensor will pair itself with another nearby node to cooperatively transmit its data in a multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) fashion. At the same time, other robots in the system will cooperatively position themselves so that the overall link quality is maximized and the total transmission energy in minimized. We efficiently simulate the system’s behavior using the Transaction Level Modeling (TLM) capability of SystemC. The simulation results demonstrate the utility of our design and provide insights into performance of the system.