Improving the Local Disk Cover Algorithm for Placing Relay Nodes in a Wireless Sensor Network

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) uses a large number of low-power sensor nodes and a base station to gather environmental information. However, the topology of WSN cannot always be fully connected owing to the limited communication range of sensor nodes. Therefore, relay nodes are used in the network to ensure reliable connectivity throughout the WSN topology. Since relay nodes are typically more expensive than sensor nodes, strategies for minimizing the number of required relay nodes have been developed. However, these strategies are typically complex and time-consuming. For instance, the Minimum Geometric Disk Cover algorithm has been shown to be NP-complete. This work proposes approaches to accelerating the Minimum Geometric Disk Cover algorithm.