Final year thesis: Solving Target Coverage Problem in Wireess Sensor Networks Using Iterative Heuristic Algorithms

This work aims to maximize the lifetime of wireless sensor networks by grouping the sensor nodes into sets and activating the sets successively.By lifetime is meant the total time for which the sensor nodes can monitor the whole target area or all the target objects. Two different cases have been dealt with- one when the transmission and reception range of sensors can be adjusted and the other in which the range of transmission and reception is fixed.Three different algorithmic paradigms are used- Greedy heuristic, Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization
The goal of the research is to propose an improved greedy heuristic and a new metaheuristic Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to increase the lifetime the sensor network by organizing the sensors into a maximal number of set covers that are activated successively.
Two heuristics that efficiently compute the sets, using exact approximation algorithm greedy heuristic and meta-heuristic algorithms such as genetic algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization have been designed.