Ant colony optimization with greedy migration mechanism for node deployment in wireless sensor networks

Node deployment is one of the most crucial issues in wireless sensor networks because it determines the deployment cost, the detection capability of the networks, and even the network lifetimes. To solve such a problem is an intricate task with realistic deployment factors such as deployment cost, connectivity guarantee, load balancing and channel collisions. In this paper, we consider the problem of grid-based coverage with low-cost and connectivity-guarantee (GCLC), and propose a novel deployment approach, ACO-Greedy, to settle this question. This approach is based on the ant colony optimization with greedy migration mechanism, which can quickly complete the full coverage, and markedly decrease the deployment cost. In addition, ACO-Greedy can dynamically adjust the sensing/communication radius to alleviate the energy hole problem and prolong the network lifetime. The simulation results reveal that our developed approach can not only decrease the deployment cost remarkably, but also effectively balance power consumption among sensor nodes and prolong the network lifetime in grid-based WSNs.