An efficient local improvement operator for the multi-objective wireless sensor network deployment problem

Abstract

Wireless sensor network layout, also known as sensor node deployment, is a complex NP-complete optimization task that determines most of the functioning features of a wireless sensor network. Coverage, connectivity and lifetime (handled through its opposing parameter, power consumption), are three of the most important characteristics of the service, and are taken into consideration in this article within a multi-objective approach of the problem. Leveraging on the specific properties of the wireless sensor nodes and networks, the Proximity Avoidance Coverage-preserving Operator (PACO) for local improvement is presented, described and tested. The testbed consists of a set of state-of-the-art multi-objective optimization algorithms with different configurations, and problem instances of varying size. In all the scenarios, and more specially in the algorithmic settings that already produce high performance solutions, PACO has proven to be a robust enhancement to the raw optimization technique, without requiring additional computation, that easily scales through problem complexity.