Genetic Algorithm for the Nodes Deployment Problem in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless technologies are opening many possibilities for monitoring and control applications, driving much research efforts in the last years. Regarding the may challenging issues related to industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSN), efficient nodes deployment is a major concern since it can directly impact the network behavior. In many cases, IWSN include particular kind of nodes in which the sensor unit and the wireless transmission units are not located in the same place. In this paper, we provide a solution to this problem through a genetic algorithm (GA), capable of give a set of positions for the set wireless transmitters, such that each node can reach a Gateway unit and it satisfies a maximum distance to its respective sensor unit which is given by the maximum length of the cable connecting the elements. Results show that our GA finds optimal solutions for the simplified considered case in very short execution times.