Sensor deployment optimization methods to achieve both coverage and connectivity in wireless sensor networks

In this study, we aim to cover a sensing area by deploying a minimum number of wireless sensors while maintaining the connectivity between the deployed sensors. The problem may be reduced to a two-dimensional critical coverage problem which is an NP-Complete problem. We develop an integer linear programming model to solve the problem optimally. We also propose a local search (LS) algorithm and a genetic algorithm (GA) as approximate methods. We verify by computational experiments that the integer linear model, using Cplex, is able to provide an optimal solution of all our small and medium size problems. We also show that the proposed methods outperform some regular sensor deployment patterns.