Survey of Deployment Algorithms in Wireless Sensor Networks: Coverage and Connectivity Issues and Challenges

International audienceWireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have many fields of application, including industrial, environmental, military, health and home domains. Monitoring a given zone is one of the main goals of this technology. This consists in deploying sensor nodes in order to detect any event occurring in the zone of interest considered and report this event to the sink. The monitoring task can vary depending on the application domain concerned. In the industrial domain, the fast and easy deployment of wireless sensor nodes allows a better monitoring of the area of interest in temporary worksites. This deployment must be able to cope with obstacles and be energy efficient in order to maximize the network lifetime. If the deployment is made after a disaster, it will operate in an unfriendly environment that is discovered dynamically. We present a survey that focuses on two major issues in WSNs: coverage and connectivity. We motivate our study by giving different use cases corresponding to different coverage, connectivity, latency and robustness requirements of the applications considered. We present a general and detailed analysis of deployment problems, while highlighting the impacting factors, the common assumptions and models adopted in the literature, as well as performance criteria for evaluation purposes. Different deployment algorithms for area, barrier, and points of interest are studied and classified according to their characteristics and properties. Several recapitulative tables illustrate and summarize our study. The designer in charge of setting up such a network will find some useful recommendations, as well as some pitfalls to avoid. Before concluding, we look at current trends and discuss some open issues

Overview of deployment and redeployment algorithms for mobile wireless sensor networks

International audienceWireless sensor networks are usually randomly deployed in the monitored region. This initial deployment does neither achieve area coverage, nor ensure network connectivity. Thus, a redeployment algorithm has to be applied in order to meet these two requirements. In this paper, we overview existing centralized redeployment algorithms such as virtual forces or particle swarm optimization category, as well as distributed algorithms such as Distributed Self-Spreading Algorithm, Force based Genetic Algorithm, Mass-Spring Relaxation Algorithm, unified Scheme for Deployment and Relocation. We then discuss some open issues related to algorithm convergence, assumptions about the initial knowledge available like the initial topology, number of sensor nodes and obstacle positions