Heuristic Optimization of Wireless Sensor Networks Using Social Network Analysis

A rapidly rising number of civilian and military real-world applications require deployments of large sensor networks. However, problems like limited energy supply, tough environments, data latency, and integrity cause adverse effects on large topologies of sensors. This paper presents a novel approach in designing the placement of relay nodes in a sensor network. By using concepts from the area of social network analysis and mapping them to the already classical field of sensor networks we succeed to add improvements to the costs implied with deploying the infrastructure. By socializing the topology with the concepts of centrality and community structure, our research is focused around a flexible design space exploration algorithm that we have devised, which offers a balance between the performance and cost of deploying relays in a sensor network. As a result, our WSN design achieves a relevant improvement over the state of the art solutions.