A Best Fit Relocation Approach for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

The heterogeneity of sensing devices has to be taken into account for increasing the network performance and lifetime. This paper presents a study for the sensor relocation problem based on the heterogeneity point of view. A novel approach named Best Fit Relocation Approach, BFRA, is proposed for heterogeneous sensors in order to maximize the coverage of the monitored field and guarantee the connectivity of the deployed sensors. This approach proposes new computational geometry algorithms with perfect complexity to be exploited in small and large-scale sensor networks. A simulation tool is proposed to perform a set of experiments to evaluate the proposed algorithms for different sensor characteristics taking into consideration the curly of field boundaries and the presence of obstacles. Simulation results show that near-optimal coverage performance could be achieved in much less both running time and average moving distance.