Optimization-based procedure to support sensor network co-design: An application to dynamic consensus problem

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) provides reduced costs, better power management, easier maintenance and effortless deployment in remote and hard-to-reach areas. As the field slowly matured and technology rapidly advanced, it has been extended to many civilian applications such as environment and habitat monitoring, home automation, and more recently health care applications. Despite of their applicability, a systematic approach to design of the sensor network architecture according to the requirements of the specific application remains a challenging problem. Many papers in the literature provides algorithm or hardware design for network-type requirements (i.e. coverage) or energy-type requirement (power consumption) or application-type requirement (estimation, set point regulation). Despite the problem complexity, herein we make a first step forward in defining a co-design procedure to optimally design sensor network architecture for simultaneously coping with network, application and energy type requirements. A co-design tool is built to support the designer. An application of the proposed approach and tool to the case of well known dynamic consensus problem is shown.