Energy-aware node placement in wireless sensor networks

One of the main design issues for wireless sensor networks is the sensor placement problem. We formulate a constrained multivariable nonlinear programming problem to determine both the locations of the sensor nodes and data transmission pattern. Our two objectives are to maximize the network lifetime and to minimize the application-specific total cost, given a fixed number of sensor nodes in a region with a certain coverage requirement. We first study a linear network, and find optimal placement strategies numerically. Through numerical results, we show that the optimal node placement strategies provide significant benefit over a commonly used uniform placement scheme. Furthermore, we also present a performance bound as a benchmark. Lastly, we extend the results to a more sophisticated planar network, and use numerical results to evaluate the performance of the proposed strategies.