Multi-objective Optimization of Barrier Coverage with Wireless Sensors

Barrier coverage focuses on detecting intruders in an attempt to cross a specific region, in which limited-power sensors in these scenarios are supposed to be distributed remotely in an indeterminate way. In this paper, we consider a scenario where sensors with adjustable ranges and a few sink nodes are deployed to form a virtual sensor barrier for monitoring a belt-shaped region and gathering incidents data. The problem takes into account three relevant objectives: minimizing power consumption while meeting the barrier coverage requirement, minimizing the number of active sensors (reliability) and minimizing the transmission distances between active sensors and the nearest sink node (efficiency of data gathering). It is shown that these three objectives are conflicting in some degree. A Problem Specific MOEA/D with local search methods is proposed for finding optimal tradeoff solutions and compared with a classical algorithm. Experimental results indicate that knee regions exist, and these knee regions may provide the best possible tradeoff for decision makers.