Sensors: Optimal Deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY

Investigators

Abstract

Proposal Title: Optimal Deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks Proposal No. : 0330203 Abstract This sensor proposal focuses on finding optimal (or near-optimal) deployment strategies for large-scale wireless sensor networks. With significant advancements in device technologies, small, low-powered, low-cost sensors have become feasible today. These devices can be deployed in large numbers to form a dense networked environment, with the objective of gathering data for various purposes. Therefore, even though an individual sensor device is expected to be cheap, the sheer number of the sensors would make the monetary cost of deployment significant. Hence the question of cost-optimal deployment is of prime importance. In the proposed project, we plan to investigate some fundamental theoretical questions regarding optimal deployment of large-scale sensor networks, and explore how our theoretical results can be applied to develop effective deployment strategies in complex practical scenarios. More specifically, the primary goal of this project is to develop sensor deployment strategies that minimize the deployment cost while meeting desired objectives on connectivity, coverage and network lifetime. This involves minimizing the number of sensors used to monitor a given region while satisfying some specified deployment criteria. We plan to consider different energy usage scenarios, and various practical constraints on the placement of the sensor nodes. The questions that we propose to investigate are important and timely, and must be addressed before networks of sensors start getting deployed at large scales. Since connectivity, coverage and deployment problems arise in a very wide variety of real-life scenarios, we believe that the fundamental questions that we explore in this project could be relevant in areas other than sensor networks as well. We are also fully committed towards establishing links between research and education. Apart from supervising graduate students, we plan to involve junior and senior level undergraduates in developing a simulator, and carrying out large scale experiments. We would also engage them in developing a software (to be made available publicly) that incorporates our research ideas, and can be used for solving sensor deployment problems in regions of arbitrary shapes and sizes, through the use of a graphical user interface. We plan to introduce a new course on optimization in networking at the graduate level, and introduce several topics and class projects related to ad-hoc and sensor networks in the senior level introductory course on networking. We would make a special effort to engage women and other under-represented groups in our research and educational programs.