Relay node placement and addition algorithms in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

The node placement is the foundation of network operation in wireless sensor networks. In many applications, the positions of gateway node and sensor node are relatively fixed. To guarantee network connectivity and reliability, some relay nodes must be reasonably placed between the gateway node and the sensor node. In the context of the above applications, we introduce many constraint conditions into the existing placement model, and adopt a hybrid placement method based on enumeration and greedy optimization algorithms to determine relay node positions from their candidate location sets, and we finally achieve the relay node initial placement and follow-up adjustment strategies, owing to new sensor nodes joining the current network. The simulation results demonstrate that our operable and optimized relay node placement algorithm can ensure multi-restricted fault-tolerant relay node placement, and the presented new evaluation standard based on the minimum distance factor can significantly improve the energy-efficiency of relay node placement algorithm.