OPEN: An Optimization Scheme of N-node coverage in wireless sensor networks

Deployment is an important issue in wireless sensor networks(WSNs). Most of recent researches focus on the opti mal deployment patterns for full-coverage WSNs. In practice, t here are only finite number of nodes can be used in WSNs application s, which cannot guarantee that the entire region can be monitor ed; On the other hand, the information generated from monitored objects is distributed unevenly in the monitored region. How to get a reasonable network deployment with the finite number of sensors becomes a practical problem, which should not be neglected. From all above, we propose a new coverage problem in WSNs named N-node coverage, which refers to using the limited number of nodes to achieve maximum information acquirement. In this problem we use the information obtained from the monitored region as the new evaluation standard for network coverage. On the basis of this standard, we construc t the N-node network coverage model and convert the deploymen t problem to a combinatorial optimization problem. we present a heuristic optimization deployment scheme, the OPEN, to sol ve the problem. Experimental results show that the OPEN can effectively improve the performance of sensor network coverag e and provide practical guidance for deployment of WSNs.