Optimal deployment of mobile sensor networks and its maintenance strategy

Sensor network deployment and its maintenance are very challenging due to hostile and unpredictable nature of environments. The field coverage of a wireless sensor network (WSN) can be enhanced and consequently network lifetime can be prolonged by optimizing the sensor deployment with a finite number of sensors. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient fuzzy optimization algorithm (EFOA) for movement assisted self-deployment of sensor networks based on three descriptors - energy, concentration and distance to neighbors. The movement of each sensor node is assumed relatively limited to further reduce energy consumption. The existing next-step move direction formulas are improved to be more realistic. We also propose a network maintenance strategy in the post-deployment phase based on the sensor node importance level ranking. Simulation results show that our approach not only achieves fast and stable deployment but also greatly improves the network coverage and energy efficiency as well as prolongs the lifetime.