LUOPAN: Light utility-oriented placement of actuator nodes in sensor/actuator networks

We develop a light utility-oriented placement of actuator nodes (LUOPAN) for wireless sensor/actuator networks (WSAN) to spread serving duties among actuator nodes (ANs). Through appropriate placement of ANs and allocation of serving duties, system deployment cost can be reduced, and the system longevity can be improved. By considering utility consumption and geographic distribution of required services, LUOPAN outperforms existing strategies (e.g. area coverage approach and greedy approach) in terms of operation efficiency and setup cost. A mixed integer linear programming is used to obtain an optimal solution in a discretized search space, with considerations of service fading and multi-scenario placements.