A Review on Sensor Node Placement Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks

One way to provide Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) with maximum coverage, maximum connectivity, minimum deployment cost and minimum energy consumption is through an effective planning mechanism in arranging an optimum number of sensor nodes. Proper planning will provide a cost-effective deployment by having optimal placements for the sensor nodes. Sensor node placement schemes are needed to accommodate the balance of coverage and energy consumption since closer sensor nodes not only reduces the energy consumption but will result in the network coverage becoming smaller. This paper critically reviews the research and development work done in sensor node placement. Based on the review, the design objectives that need to be considered are identified. Most of the work reviewed focused on two or three design objectives

From carbon nanotubes and silicate layers to graphene platelets for polymer nanocomposites

In spite of extensive studies conducted on carbon nanotubes and silicate layers for their polymer-based nanocomposites, the rise of graphene now provides a more promising candidate due to its exceptionally high mechanical performance and electrical and thermal conductivities. The present study developed a facile approach to fabricate epoxy–graphene nanocomposites by thermally expanding a commercial product followed by ultrasonication and solution-compounding with epoxy, and investigated their morphologies, mechanical properties, electrical conductivity and thermal mechanical behaviour. Graphene platelets (GnPs) of 3.5

Reliable cost-optimal deployment of wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) technology is currently considered one of the key technologies for realizing the Internet of Things (IoT). Many of the important WSNs applications are critical in nature such that the failure of the WSN to carry out its required tasks can have serious detrimental effects. Consequently, guaranteeing that the WSN functions satisfactorily during its intended mission time, i.e. the WSN is reliable, is one of the fundamental requirements of the network deployment strategy. Achieving this requirement at a minimum deployment cost is particularly important for critical applications in which deployed SNs are equipped with expensive hardware. However, WSN reliability, defined in the traditional sense, especially in conjunction with minimizing the deployment cost, has not been considered as a deployment requirement in existing WSN deployment algorithms to the best of our knowledge. Addressing this major limitation is the central focus of this dissertation. We define the reliable cost-optimal WSN deployment as the one that has minimum deployment cost with a reliability level that meets or exceeds a minimum level specified by the targeted application. We coin the problem of finding such deployments, for a given set of application-specific parameters, the Minimum-Cost Reliability-Constrained Sensor Node Deployment Problem (MCRC-SDP). To accomplish the aim of the dissertation, we propose a novel WSN reliability metric which adopts a more accurate SN model than the model used in the existing metrics. The proposed reliability metric is used to formulate the MCRC-SDP as a constrained combinatorial optimization problem which we prove to be NP-Complete. Two heuristic WSN deployment optimization algorithms are then developed to find high quality solutions for the MCRC-SDP. Finally, we investigate the practical realization of the techniques that we developed as solutions of the MCRC-SDP. For this purpose, we discuss why existing WSN Topology Control Protocols (TCPs) are not suitable for managing such reliable cost-optimal deployments. Accordingly, we propose a practical TCP that is suitable for managing the sleep/active cycles of the redundant SNs in such deployments. Experimental results suggest that the proposed TCP\u27s overhead and network Time To Repair (TTR) are relatively low which demonstrates the applicability of our proposed deployment solution in practice

The Deployment in the Wireless Sensor Networks: Methodologies, Recent Works and Applications

International audienceThe wireless sensor networks (WSN) is a research area in continuous evolution with a variety of application contexts. Wireless sensor networks pose many optimization problems, particularly because sensors have limited capacity in terms of energy, processing and memory. The deployment of sensor nodes is a critical phase that significantly affects the functioning and performance of the network. Often, the sensors constituting the network cannot be accurately positioned, and are scattered erratically. To compensate the randomness character of their placement, a large number of sensors is typically deployed, which also helps to increase the fault tolerance of the network. In this paper, we are interested in studying the positioning and placement of sensor nodes in a WSN. First, we introduce the problem of deployment and then we present the latest research works about the different proposed methods to solve this problem. Finally, we mention some similar issues related to the deployment and some of its interesting applications

Energy-Efficient Node Deployment in Static and Mobile Heterogeneous Multi-Hop Wireless Sensor Networks

We study a heterogeneous wireless sensor network (WSN) where N heterogeneous access points (APs) gather data from densely deployed sensors and transmit their sensed information to M heterogeneous fusion centers (FCs) via multi-hop wireless communication. This heterogeneous node deployment problem is modeled as an optimization problem with total wireless communication power consumption of the network as its objective function. We consider both static WSNs, where nodes retain their deployed position, and mobile WSNs where nodes can move from their initial deployment to their optimal locations. Based on the derived necessary conditions for the optimal node deployment in static WSNs, we propose an iterative algorithm to deploy nodes. In addition, we study the necessary conditions of the optimal movement-efficient node deployment in mobile WSNs with constrained movement energy, and present iterative algorithms to find such deployments, accordingly. Simulation results show that our proposed node deployment algorithms outperform the existing methods in the literature, and achieves a lower total wireless communication power in both static and mobile WSNs, on average

Controlled Mobility in Mobile Sensor Networks: Advantages, Issues and Challenges

International audienceRecently, wireless self-organizing networks are attracting a lot of interest in the research community. Moreover, in the last decade many mobile devices have appeared in the market. Exploiting mobility in a wireless environment, instead of considering it as a kind of disturbance, is a fundamental concept that the research community is beginning to appreciate now. Of course, the advantages obtainable through the use of the mobility imply the knowledge of the different types of mobility and the way to include it in the management architecture of the wireless networks. In this work we claim that mobility and wireless sensor networks can be considered as two synergetic elements of the same reality. For this purpose, we sketch a macro-classification of the different objectives which can be pursued by controlled mobility. Moreover, we identify and highlight the interactions between this specific type of mobility and the layers of the control stack. Lastly, this paper reports a case study in which we show how controlled mobility can be exploited practically