Efficient Wireless Sensor Deployment at Minimum Cost

We address the problem of defining a wireless sensor network by deploying sensors with the aim of guaranteeing the coverage of the area and the connectivity among the sensors. The wireless sensor networks are widely studied since they provide several services, e.g., environmental monitoring and target tracking. We consider several typologies of sensors characterized by different sensing and connectivity ranges. A cost is associated with each typology of sensors. In particular, the higher the sensing and connectivity ranges, the higher the cost. We formulate the problem of deploying sensors at minimum cost such that each sensor is connected to a base station with either a one- or a multi-hop and the area is full covered. We present preliminary computational results by solving the proposed mathematical model, on several instances. We provide a simulation-based analysis of the performances of such a deployment from the routing perspective.