In this paper the persistent awareness coverage problem for mobile sensors with awareness loss is considered, where persistent coverage and awareness coverage are addressed simultaneously. The goal is to cover the mission domain periodically with a finite period and guarantee full awareness coverage of a finite set of points of interest. A closed path is designed such that it is possible to develop periodic speed controllers for mobile sensors. When there is no constraint on the period, the least number of mobile sensors that are needed for the persistent awareness coverage task is derived. Given a network of mobile sensors and a finite period, it is shown that the persistent awareness coverage task can be accomplished if there exists a solution to a set of linear inequalities. Finally, if there is no awareness loss, the proposed approach guarantees full awareness coverage of the whole mission domain even if only one sensor is deployed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.