Optimised use of nodes in Wireless Sensor Network: A novel approach to overcome the effect of interference

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks have highly been in demand in the recent times for monitoring and controlling purposes. Low cost, low power and simpler architecture involving the wireless sensor modules have made them quite an acceptable tool for data monitoring. But interference has been the major area of concern in WSN which often leads to data loss during data monitoring and have immense ill-effects in controlling of the processes. A large number of wireless nodes communicating in the same frequency range results in signal crossovers. On the other hand, use of less number of routers reduces the system reliability because failure of a single router may cut out communication with a particular sensor. Hence, number of routers used in the network needs to be optimized subject to the constraint that each router should be capable of handling data from multiple tags. In this work, Cultural Algorithm has been employed in a model area consisting of 40 sensors to calculate the optimum number of routers required for efficient performance of the entire network. The results obtained ensure a less interfered and highly reliable network with all the sensor data being collected.