Energy-Efficient Deployment of Water Quality Sensor Networks

Water quality sensor networks are promising tools for the exploration of oceans. Some key areas need to be monitored effectively. Water quality sensors are deployed randomly or uniformly, however, and understanding how to deploy sensor nodes reasonably and realize effective monitoring of key areas on the basis of monitoring the whole area is an urgent problem to be solved. Additionally, energy is limited in water quality sensor networks. When moving sensor nodes, we should extend the life cycle of the sensor networks as much as possible. In this study, sensor nodes in non-key monitored areas are moved to key areas. First, we used the concentric circle method to determine the mobile sensor nodes and the target locations. Then, we determined the relationship between the mobile sensor nodes and the target locations according to the energy matrix. Finally, we calculated the shortest moving path according to the Floyd algorithm, which realizes the redeployment of the key monitored area. The simulation results showed that, compared with the method of direct movement, the proposed method can effectively reduce the energy consumption and save the network adjustment time based on the effective coverage of key areas.