Brain storm optimization algorithms for optimal coverage of wireless sensor networks

Optimal coverage plays an essential role in the service quality of wireless sensor networks because the monitoring can be accurate and meaningful if and only if information from all interesting areas is collected. To ensure high coverage and reduce cost in coverage problems, efficient deployments of sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks become the target of coverage optimization. This paper focuses on using the fewest number of sensor nodes to cover more areas in regular or irregular interesting areas with irregular obstacles inside. To optimize the deployment of sensor nodes, in this paper, a brain storm optimization algorithm is utilized and simulation results show that the algorithm performs well on optimizing the coverage percentage and minimizing the needed sensor nodes under complex environments. In addition, the balance of coverage percentage and needed sensor nodes´ number can be adjusted according to specific requirements of different networks. For better optimization results in coverage problems, the step size in the generation process of the brain storm optimization algorithm has also been modified to reach higher coverage using fewer sensor nodes under the same environment.