Joint Optimal Placement, Routing, and Flow Assignment in Wireless Sensor Networks for Structural Health Monitoring

Abstract

Sensor node placement optimization has a significant role in wireless sensor networks, especially in structural health monitoring. Since sensor node placement affects the routing, optimization should be Jointly done for the node placement and routing. The existing work separately optimizes the node placement and routing (by performing routing after carrying out the node placement). However, this approach does not guarantee the optimality of the overall solution. In this paper, joint optimization of sensor placement, routing, and flow assignment is introduced and solved using mixed integer programming modeling. Finding an optimal solution for this joint problem is too complex. Hence, a near-optimal solution is obtained using genetic algorithms with reduced complexity. In addition, a heuristic algorithm for joint routing and flow assignment with placement is proposed using the effective independence model, which optimizes the information quality and energy consumption for efficient communication. Lastly, results are presented in a nine-floor building to compare the three proposed algorithms with the heuristic algorithm by Li et al. The numerical results show the efficiency of the proposed algorithms and the tradeoff between the efficiency and the complexity. 2001-2012 IEEE.