A simulated annealing algorithm for energy-efficient sensor network design

In this paper, we develop an algorithm to deploy an energy efficient sensor network such that it provides surveillance and target-positioning services. We consider to place K independent sets of sensors on a sensor field. These sets monitor the field in turn and work together when intrusion events occur. The lifetime of the sensor network is therefore prolonged up to K times. The problem is therefore a variant of the set K-cover problem, which is NP-complete. We formulate such sensor deployment problem, as a 0/1 integer programming problem. A simulated annealing based heuristic then is proposed for solving the optimization problem. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm indicates a significant improvement in the sensor lifetime compared to the intuitive approach. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is highly effective and efficient in terms of the overall deployment cost.