The minimum cost sensor placement problem for directional wireless sensor networks

Unlike isotropic sensors, directional sensors have a finite angle of view and thus cannot sense the whole circular area around them. The sensing region of a directional sensor can be viewed as a sector in a 2D plane. A directional sensor network is formed by directional sensors which may be oriented toward different directions. In this paper, we present an integer linear programming model for the minimum cost sensor placement problem in directional sensor networks. The objective is to minimize the total cost of directional sensors by properly choosing the type and direction for each sensor to be installed in the sensor field. The model guarantees that all the targets are covered and sensor nodes can deliver their data to a sink node. Numerical results demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of the proposed model.