Optimization of Actors Placement within Wireless Sensor-Actor Networks

Wireless sensor-actor networks (WSANs) refer to a group of sensors and actors linked by wireless medium to perform distributed sensing and acting tasks. The main communication paradigm in WSANs is based on the sensor-actor coordination. Appropriate actions, which are corresponding to the sensed phenomenon, can't be performed unless the event's information is transmitted from the sensors to actors. One of the main requirements of sensor-actor communication in WSANs is the real-time requirement. Despite the importance of real-time communications in WSANs, to date no significant solution exists for this problem. This paper examines the placement of actors with respect to a real-time communication constraint in the WSANs. We have utilized the genetic algorithm (GA) to search the space with an objective function consisting of a main term (the communication delay) and two competitive terms (cost and accuracy). Our simulation results show that our proposed methodology provides a cost effective and accurate solution for the placement of actors within WSAN when the sensors are densely deployed.