Cluster-based optimal wireless sensor deployment for structural health monitoring

A well-designed wireless sensor deployment method not only directly influences the number of deployed sensors and data accuracy, but also influences on network topology. As most of the energy cost comes from the transmission and receiving of data packets, clustering optimization in wireless sensor network becomes an important issue for energy-efficient coordination among the densely deployed nodes for data communication. In a typical hierarchical wireless sensor network, total intra-cluster communication distance and total distance of cluster heads to base station depend on number of cluster heads. This work presents a novel approach by selecting the number of clusters in hierarchical wireless sensor network. We analyze and demonstrate the validity of the cluster optimization for wireless sensor deployment using an example of a numerically simulated simply supported truss, in terms of efficient use of the constrained wireless sensor network resources. Followed by a cluster-based optimization framework, we show how to adopt our approach to achieve scalable and efficient deployment, through a comprehensive optimization study of a realistic wireless structural health monitoring system. Finally, we suggest optimal deployment scheme based on the comparative performance evaluation results in the case study.