TABLE OF CONTENTS The problem of deployment of a wireless sensor network could be formulated generically as follows: given a particular application context, an operational region, and a set of wireless sensor devices, how and where should these nodes be placed?
The network must be deployed keeping in mind two main objectives: coverage and connectivity. Coverage pertains to the application-specific quality of information obtained from the environment by the networked sensor devices. Connectivity pertains to the network topology over which information routing can take place. Other issues, such as equipment costs, energy limitations, and the need for robustness, should also be taken into account.
A number of basic questions must be considered when deploying a wireless sensor network:
Structured versus randomized deployment: Does the network involve (a) structured placement, either by hand or via autonomous robotic nodes, or (b) randomly scattered deployment?
Over-deployment versus incremental deployment: For robustness against node failures and energy depletion, should the network be deployed a priori with redundant nodes, or can nodes be added or replaced incrementally when the need arises? In the former case, sleep scheduling is desirable to extend network lifetime, a topic we will treat in Chapter 7.
Network topology: Is the network topology going to be a simple star topology, or a grid, or an arbitrary multi-hop mesh, or a two-level cluster hierarchy? What kind of robust connectivity guarantees are desired?
Homogeneous versus heterogeneous deployment: Are...
