Optimized Node Deployment in Wireless Sensor Network for Smart Grid Application

At present the low cost, low power and collaborative feature of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is becoming a popular communication technology in smart grid including power generation, transmission and distribution. Among these, the health monitoring of wind power generation system has emerged as one of the many possible applications of WSNs. However the harsh environmental condition of wind farm application brings node deployment as a major design issue in WSN which is well associated with coverage and connectivity issues. Hence the research objective here is twofold. Firstly the sensor nodes are placed optimally in the key components of the wind turbines to improve target coverage. The adjacent turbine span varies with several hundred meters apart which results in independent wireless sensor sub-networks. Connectivity among these sub-networks is a second vital issue, which is guaranteed by joining all the independent sub-networks with the base station by placing minimum number of relay nodes. Hence the connectivity problem is considered as Relay Node Deployment Problem. Connectivity is obtained in this work by bio-inspired Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm. ACO is further enhanced as ACO-Intelligent Movement, by introducing intelligent movement mechanism. The goal of this approach is to optimize number of relay nodes, decrease deployment cost and to bring up network connectivity. The performance of our novel deployment approach is validated through extensive simulation results.