Sensors: Optimal Deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks

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Proposal Title: Optimal Deployment of Wireless Sensor NetworksProposal No. : 0330203AbstractThis sensor proposal focuses on finding optimal (or near-optimal) deployment strategiesfor large-scale wireless sensor networks. With significant advancements in devicetechnologies, small, low-powered, low-cost sensors have become feasible today. Thesedevices can be deployed in large numbers to form a dense networked environment, with theobjective of gathering data for various purposes. Therefore, even though an individualsensor device is expected to be cheap, the sheer number of the sensors would make themonetary cost of deployment significant. Hence the question of cost-optimal deployment isof prime importance. In the proposed project, we plan to investigate some fundamentaltheoretical questions regarding optimal deployment of large-scale sensor networks, andexplore how our theoretical results can be applied to develop effective deploymentstrategies in complex practical scenarios.More specifically, the primary goal of this project is to develop sensor deploymentstrategies that minimize the deployment cost while meeting desired objectives onconnectivity, coverage and network lifetime. This involves minimizing the number ofsensors used to monitor a given region while satisfying some specified deploymentcriteria. We plan to consider different energy usage scenarios, and various practicalconstraints on the placement of the sensor nodes. The questions that we propose toinvestigate are important and timely, and must be addressed before networks of sensorsstart getting deployed at large scales. Since connectivity, coverage and deploymentproblems arise in a very wide variety of real-life scenarios, we believe that thefundamental questions that we explore in this project could be relevant in areas otherthan sensor networks as well.We are also fully committed towards establishing links between research and education.Apart from supervising graduate students, we plan to involve junior and senior levelundergraduates in developing a simulator, and carrying out large scale experiments. Wewould also engage them in developing a software (to be made available publicly) thatincorporates our research ideas, and can be used for solving sensor deployment problemsin regions of arbitrary shapes and sizes, through the use of a graphical user interface.We plan to introduce a new course on optimization in networking at the graduate level,and introduce several topics and class projects related to ad-hoc and sensor networks inthe senior level introductory course on networking. We would make a special effort toengage women and other under-represented groups in our research and educational programs.