Optimizing placement of beacons and data loggers in a sensor network - a case study

Localization and clustering of sensor nodes are important services in a sensor network since the nodes are typically deployed in an ad-hoc manner into an infrastructure-less terrain. When beacons are used for localization, there are two critical design issues: 1) to maximize the lifetime of the beacons and 2) to maximize the coverage area. With clustering, the goal is to minimize the energy dissipation of the sensor network. In this paper, we consider the placement of beacons and data loggers (that act as cluster heads) in the Cosumnes River Preserve, which is a joint collaborative restoration project between the Cosumnes Research Consortium at University of California at Davis (UCD) and The Nature Conservancy. Currently, there are many types of sensors deployed in the preserve which are wired to data loggers. Our objective is to determine the minimum number and placement of beacons and data loggers for wireless sensors deployed in the preserve. We formulated an optimization problem which is solved by integer linear program (ILP).