An efficient coverage and maximization of network lifetime in wireless sensor networks through metaheuristics

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), energy, connectivity, and coverage are the three most important constraints for guaranteed data forwarding from every sensor node to the base station. Due to continuous sensing and transmission tasks, the sensor nodes deplete more quickly and hence they seek the help of data forwarding nodes, called relay nodes. However, for a given set of sensor nodes, finding optimal locations to place relay nodes is a very challenging problem. Moreover, from the earlier studies, the relay node placement is defined as a non-deterministic polynomial tree hard (NP-Hard) problem. To solve this problem, we propose a multi-objective firefly algorithm-based relay node placement (MOFF-RNP) to deploy an optimal number of relay nodes while considering connectivity, coverage, and energy constraints. To achieve network lifetime, this work adopted energy harvesting capabilities to the sensor nodes and backup relay strategy such that every sensor node is always connected to at least one relay to forward the data. The optimal relay placement is formulated as an objective function and MOFF is applied to achieve a better solution. Extensive Simulations are carried out over the proposed model to validate the performance and the obtained results are compared with state-of-art methods)