Sensor Deployment with Limited Communication Range in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: We study the heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and propose the necessary condition of the optimal sensor deployment. Similar to that in homogeneous WSNs, the necessary condition implies that every sensor node location should coincide with the centroid of its own optimal sensing region. Moreover, we discuss the dynamic sensor deployment in both homogeneous and heterogeneous WSNs with limited communication range for the sensor nodes. The purpose of sensor deployment is to improve sensing performance, reflected by distortion and coverage. We model the sensor deployment problem as a source coding problem with distortion reflecting sensing accuracy. Traditionally, coverage is the area covered by the sensor nodes. However, when the communication range is limited, a WSN may be divided into several disconnected sub-graphs. Under such a scenario, neither the conventional distortion nor the coverage represents the sensing performance as the collected data in disconnected sub-graphs cannot be communicated with the access point. By defining an appropriate distortion measure, we propose a Restrained Lloyd (RL) algorithm and a Deterministic Annealing (DA) algorithm to optimize sensor deployment in both homogeneous and heterogeneous WSNs. Our simulation results show that both DA and RL algorithms outperform the existing Lloyd algorithm when communication range is limited.