Efficient deployment of wireless sensor networks targeting environment monitoring applications

Maximizing network connectivity while maintaining a useful lifetime period without exceeding cost constraints is a challenging design objective for wireless sensor networks. Satisfying such objective becomes even a more intricate task with 3-D setups and harsh operational conditions found in typical large scale environment monitoring applications. While much work has been performed in environment monitoring, only few have addressed the unique characteristics of such applications. In this paper, we introduce a novel 3-D deployment strategy, called Optimized 3-D deployment with Lifetime Constraint (03DwLC), for relay nodes in environmental applications. The strategy optimizes network connectivity, while guarantying specific network lifetime and limited cost. Key to our contribution is a very limited search space for the optimization problem, in addition to a revised definition for network lifetime that is more appropriate in environment monitoring. The effectiveness of our strategy is validated through extensive simulations and comparisons, assuming practical considerations of signal propagation and connectivity. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier B.V.