Communication-constrained p-center problem for event coverage in theme parks

Wireless sensor networks with mobile sinks can be deployed for efficient handling of the events that may occur in a theme park. In such a case, the success of event handling depends on the positions of the mobile sinks and the selection of the most suitable sink to cover an event. While this problem can be solved by using the classical vertex p-center problem, such a solution does not guarantee connectivity among the mobile sinks. The connectivity among mobile sinks is crucial since they need to communicate to share information and perform collaborative event handling. In this paper, we introduce a new variant of vertex p-center problem which we name communication-constrained p-center problem. We propose an exact algorithm as a solution based on identifying connected subnets among the vertices. The performance of the proposed solution is validated through simulations with respect to other approaches as well as the unconstrained case.