Shape based customized node deployment approach for WSNs

Abstract

The use of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has become an essential technology in many application domains including precision agriculture. Node deployment is a key issue in WSNs. In this paper, the nodes will be deployed over a network in a deterministic fashion in which the position of sensor nodes is known before deployment. These nodes are arranged regularly using triangular grid node deployment strategy over the given shape of the monitored region. This approach computes the minimum number of nodes needed to construct a sensor network and determine the position of sensor nodes using spatial coordinates with corresponding node deployment scheme and network topology. It uses real world deployment scenarios (i.e., taking the real shape of the monitored region of farmland) and determines the position of sensor nodes using spatial coordinates and this makes it more practical than others. This approach has to meet various requirements, such as coverage area, network lifetime, cost and ease of deployment, number of nodes, and adaptability. Moreover, we compared hierarchical routing algorithms called PEGASIS and LEACH to evaluate the network lifetime of the proposed scheme since the proposed node deployment scheme has an effect on routing. The results obtained from the implementation and evaluation of the proposed approach achieved the desired requirements and it is applicable to practical environments such as irregularly shaped farmland. We also show that node deployment is affected by the shape of the farmland. Thus, the required number of nodes and their positions can be adjusted adaptively to different shapes of farmlands.