On the Optimal Deployment of Heterogeneous Sensing Devices

Abstract

The problem of optimally deploying a heterogeneous set of sensing devices in environments with differential surveillance requirements is presented. The problem is formulated in the form of integer mathematical program with an objective function that maximizes overall system coverage. The formulation considers several operation capabilities for the sensing devices including reliability, mobility, transfer cost, lifespan and power selfscheduling. Due to the intractability of the problem, optimal solutions obtained using our mathematical programming formulation can be utilized for small problems. In addition to the optimal solution, two heuristic algorithms are presented to solve different versions of the problem. A set of experiments is conducted to evaluate the algorithms performances for different problem settings. Results of these experiments illustrate that near-optimal coverage performance could be achieved in much less running time.