IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 11, NO.
3, MARCH 2011
A Hybrid Multiobjective Evolutionary Approach
for Improving the Performance of
Wireless Sensor Networks
Flávio V. C. Martins, Eduardo G. Carrano, Elizabeth F. Wanner, Ricardo H. C. Takahashi, Member, IEEE, and
Geraldo R. Mateus
Abstract—The increasing in the demand for Wireless Sensor
Networks (WSNs) has intensified studies which are dedicated to
obtain more energy-efficient solutions, since the energy storage
limitation is critical in those systems. Additionally, there are other
aspects which usually must be ensured in order to get an accept-
able performance of WSNs, such as area coverage and network
connectivity. This paper proposes a procedure for enhancing
the performance of WSNs: a multiobjective hybrid optimization
algorithm is employed for solving the Dynamic Coverage and
Connectivity Problem (DCCP) in flat WSNs subjected to node
failures. This method combines a multiobjective global on-de-
mand algorithm (MGoDA), which improves the current DCCP
solution using a Genetic Algorithm, with a local on line algorithm
(LoA), which is intended to restore the network coverage soon
after any failure. The proposed approach is compared with an
Integer Linear Programming (ILP)-based approach and a similar
mono-objective approach with regard to coverage, network life-
time and required running time for achieving the optimal solution
provided by each method. Results achieved for a test instance show
that the hybrid approach presented can improve the performance
of the WSN obtaining good solutions with a considerably smaller
computational time than ILP. The multiobjective approach still
provides a feasible method for extending WSNs lifetime with slight
decreasing in the network mean coverage.
Index Terms—Evolutionary algorithms, multiobjective op-
timization, performance evaluation, wireless sensor networks
(WSNs).
I. INTRODUCTION
I N THE LAST DECADE, several advances in embedded
systems and wireless communication have made possible
the arising of a new kind of ad-hoc network, the Wireless Sensor
Manuscript received March 08, 2010; revised April 08, 2010 accepted
April 08, 2010. Date of publication June 07, 2010; date of current version
January 21, 2011. This work was supported in part by CNPq, CAPES, and
FAPEMIG—Brazil. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper
and approving it for publication was Dr. Subhas Mukhopadhyay.
F. V. C. Martins is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Universi-
dade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, 31270-010, Brazil (e-mail:
flavio@cpdee.ufmg.br; fcruzeirom@gmail.com).
E. G. Carrano and E. F. Wanner are with the Department of Computer
Engineering, Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Minas Gerais,
Belo Horizonte, MG, 30480-000, Brazil (e-mail: egcarrano@deii.cefetmg.br;
efwanner@dppg.cefetmg.br).
R. H. C. Takahashi is with the Department of Mathematics, Universidade
Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, 31270-010, Brazil (e-mail:
taka@mat.ufmg.br).
G. R. Mateus is with the Department of Computer Science, Universidade
Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, 31270-010, Brazil (e-mail: ma-
teus@dcc.ufmg.br).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2010.2048897
1530-437X/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
545
Network (WSN). The WSN is composed of sensor nodes, which
are built with a sensor board, a processor, a radio and a bat-
tery. These components allow the sensor to perform sensing,
processing and communication tasks inside a coverage radius.
When the network is in operation, the sensors collect data from
a phenomenon which is being analyzed, and disseminate them
toward the sink node, using multihop communication. In the lit-
erature, several works show the importance of WSNs and their
applications for monitoring of: wild life [1], structural health
[2], [3], mine tunnels [4], toxic organic compounds in the envi-
ronment [5], etc.
Since the sensor nodes usually have to be cheap and com-
pact they present limited energy storage and low processing and
communication capabilities [6]. The impossibility of recharging
or replacing the node battery, specially in networks installed in
regions of difficult access, imposes a serious constraint for the
designer: each node in the network has a limited lifetime, which
cannot be extended.
There are often many possible network configurations which
are available for network setup. Each possible configuration is
defined by the state of the sensor nodes, which can be active or
inactive. An active node is able to transmit its own data, and data
received from other sensors, to the nodes which are inside its
communication radius. On the other hand, each inactive node is
maintained in an energy-saving state, in which it consumes very
low energy and can be woken up any time it is necessary.
The communication in the network is often structured as a
tree graph, in which there is only a single path between each
sensor and the sink node. The choice for the tree structure is
justified by the energy consumption imposed by this topology,
which is lower than the consumption in a redundant network.
When a node becomes unavailable, due to out-of-power condi-
tion, a rearrangement of the network layout (without this node)
must be performed, in order to reestablish the communication
without significant reduction in the network coverage. Each
time this operation is performed, there are usually several
alternatives for reconfiguration. Each different choice of the
network configuration, in each stage, determines in which time
a further reconfiguration will be necessary and, consequently,
the lifetime of the network.
The optimal design of the WSNs can be useful to extend the
network lifetime, ensuring adequate network coverage and con-
nectivity. Recent works show that an efficient density control
in high density sensor networks can save significant amounts
of energy and can improve the data dissemination, since it de-
creases packet collisions and radio interference [7]. In a density
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control scheme, some nodes are scheduled to sleep (or change
to energy-saving state), while other ones continue to collect and
disseminate data to sink nodes [8]. Therefore, a fundamental
problem in high density WSNs is to minimize the number of
active nodes to save energy, while keeping the area coverage
and the connectivity of nodes.
This paper presents a multiobjective hybrid approach for per-
forming the density control in WSNs, which are subjected to
out-of-power failure in sensor nodes. The problem is modeled
as a multiobjective optimization one, in which the design cri-
teria are set as minimizing the energy consumption and max-
imizing the coverage while keeping the network connectivity.
A decision-making procedure is applied to extract a single de-
cision from the Pareto-set each time a reconfiguration proce-
dure is needed. The approach is composed of a Multiobjective
Global on Demand Algorithm (MGoDA), which uses Nondom-
inated Sorting Genetic Algorithm 2 (NSGA-II) [9] for solving
the Dynamic Coverage and Connectivity Problem (DCCP), and
a Local on line Algorithm (LoA), which uses some deterministic
rules to fast restore the network coverage after some failure.
The proposed multiobjective methodology is compared with
an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) based approach and with
a mono-objective hybrid algorithm with similar characteristics.
The final solutions provided by these methods are evaluated
with regard to network lifetime, network coverage, energy con-
sumption and computational required computational time for
obtaining such solutions.
This paper is structured as follows: Section II presents a
short discussion about multiobjective optimization. Section III
presents a short study of the state-of-art in density control
methods for WSNs. The definition of the problem is presented
in Section IV. The hybrid algorithm which is proposed here
for dealing with the DCCP is discussed in Section V. Finally,
Section VI presents the results obtained by the proposed
approach and by two other ones in five instances with up to
100 sensor nodes.
II. MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION
A general multiobjective optimization problem can be stated
as
(1)
in which is the decision vector, is the optimiza-
tion parameter space, is the feasible set, which is com-
posed of the solutions which satisfy the problem constraints,
is the vector of objective functions for
the problem and is the set of efficient points.
The set of efficient points (or Pareto-optimal set), which con-
stitutes the solution of the multiobjective optimization problem,
consists of all decision vectors in which the corresponding ob-
jective vector cannot be improved in any dimension without
degradation in another one. Given two decision vectors and
, is said to dominate if, and only if
(2)
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 11, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
All decision vectors which are not dominated by any other deci-
sion vector of a given set are called nondominated regarding this
set. Consequently, a Pareto-optimal solution is a vector which
is not dominated by any other vector of the feasible set , and
the set of all Pareto-optimal solutions is the Pareto-optimal set
. The image of the Pareto-optimal set in the objective func-
tion space is usually called the Pareto-front .
III. DENSITY CONTROL IN WSNS: A SHORT REVIEW
The limited energy of WSN sensors is one of the most restric-
tive aspects for their employment. Several studies have been re-
cently proposed for performing the density control in WSNs, in
order to extend the network lifetime, at the same time that the
connectivity and coverage constraints are kept satisfied. Some
of these studies are briefly discussed in the remainder of this
section.
Meguerdichian and Potkonjak [10] model the coverage
problem using ILP. For solving the resulting problem, the
authors propose the employment of greedy algorithms based
on Set Coverage Theory.
Chakrabarty et al. [11] also deal with the coverage problem
using linear programming. The authors present a mathematical
model to minimize the cost of deploying heterogeneous nodes
in the monitoring area subjected to coverage constraints.
Vieira et al. [12] and Meguerdichian et al. [13] propose algo-
rithms based on graph theory and computational geometry for
solving the coverage problem in WSNs.
Tilak et al. [14] propose a scheduling scheme which period-
ically chooses a subset of nodes to perform the network tasks
and sends the remaining nodes to energy-saving state. The ob-
jective considered in this work is to minimize the number of
active nodes in each time period, complying with connectivity
and coverage constraints.
Nakamura et al. [7] propose an ILP model to the multiperiod
coverage and connectivity problem in flat WSNs and solve it
with the commercial optimization package CPLEX [15]. The
model adds, to the coverage and connectivity constraints, a set
of constraints regarding the node energy limits. Its goal is to
provide a solution which ensures the best coverage and connec-
tivity for all periods of time considering the node battery ca-
pacity. Quintao et al. [16] compare the CPLEX solutions with
the ones achieved with an evolutionary algorithm (EA), consid-
ering only the WSN coverage as the relevant design criterion.
Wu et al. [17] present a preliminary attempt of dealing with
multiple objectives in this kind of problem. The authors aggre-
gate three objectives (communication cost, path loss and de-
tected signal energy level) into a single function, which is min-
imized by a genetic algorithm (GA). Although this approach
presents advances with relation to the mono-objective ones, it
cannot be considered as a true multiobjective one, since it solves
a scalar problem, whose solution is a single optimal point. Even
if those objectives were aggregated using a weighted sum, and
the weights were varied, creating multiple scalar problems with
different solutions, it would be still possible to show that this
approach would lose efficient solutions, which could be useful
to the designer [18].
Rajagopalan et al. [19] present another approach which in-
tends to deal with WSN density control using multiobjective
MARTINS et al.: A HYBRID MULTIOBJECTIVE EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH FOR IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF WSNS 547

optimization. The problem objectives are stated as maximizing

the total detected signal energy, while minimizing the energy
consumption and the path loss. In that problem, the sink node
is mobile and follows some route to collect the data from the
sensor nodes, which are arranged in clusters. The problem is
solved via a multiobjective EA.
Martins et al. [20] present a hybrid mono-objective approach
for performing the density control of flat WSNs. The minimiza-
tion of the energy consumption is considered as the optimiza-
tion criterion for the mono-objective problem and the coverage
is modeled as a constraint. The algorithm proposed in that ref-
erence has been used as basis for implementing the algorithm
presented in this work, and takes into account the dynamic na-
ture of the problem.
It is important to highlight the improvements of the approach
presented in this paper with relation to the ones described above.
The present paper explicitly considers the problem as a multi-
stage decision problem (although employing greedy heuristics
for solving the problem). The coverage area is explicitly mod-
eled, and a tradeoff between coverage area and network lifetime
is established. The multiobjective approach provides additional
information to the designer, allowing a choice between networks
that last more time and networks that cover greater areas.

IV. PROBLEM DEFINITION

In order to model the coverage of WSNs, it is usual to dis-
cretize the monitoring area in a set of points, the so-called de-
mand points, which require sensing. The coverage area of each
sensor node is modeled as a circle of radius , in such a way that
if the distance between a demand point and a sensor node Fig. 1. DCCP in flat WSNs. Light gray nodes represent active sensors and dark
A
gray nodes represent inactive sensors. (a) Monitoring area— . (b) Set of sensor
is lower than , then can be covered by . The multiobjective
S m D
nodes— . (c) Sink node— . (d) Set of demand points— . (e) Solution at
version of the problem can be defined as follows. t t
period . (f) Solution at period .
Let be a set of sensor nodes, be a sink node and be a
monitoring area which is discretized in a set of demand points
. The Coverage Problem in a WSN consists of ensuring that • The traffic on WSN is caused only by data of the considered
the set of sensor nodes covers at least a fraction of application.
the demand points . On the other hand, the Connectivity Some parameters must be defined before introducing the
Problem consists of guaranteeing that there is at least one path problem formulation:
between each active sensor node and the sink node .
Thus, the solution of the DCCP in a flat Wireless Sensor Net- set of sensor nodes;
work can be defined as finding a network which complies with
set of demand points;
coverage and connectivity constraints at each period of time and
minimizes the energy consumed in the system, in order to max- set of indices of the time periods between sensor
imize its lifetime. failures, such that ;
The usual mono-objective problem is stated as an instance of connectivity matrix (each cell assumes value 1
this definition, with the requirement of full demand point cov- in when the sensor reaches the demanding point
erage, or . or 0 otherwise);
An example of the DCCP is illustrated in Fig. 1.
set of arcs which connect the sensor nodes between
A. Mathematical Modeling them;
The static DCCP for flat WSNs is usually modeled as an ILP set of arcs which connect the sensor nodes to the
problem [7], [20]. Some considerations are assumed as true for sink node;
elaborating the model and algorithms: set of arcs of set which reaches the sensor node
• Each node has an unique ID and its location is known (at ;
least approximately).
• The application requires continuous monitoring and the set of arcs of set which starts from sensor node
data can be disseminated periodically. ;
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activation energy of sensor node ;
maintenance power of the sensor node at the
period of time ;
transmission power between the sensor nodes and
, at the period of time ;
reception power of the sensor node at the period
of time ; (7)
energy consumed by node the node at the period
of time . (8)
binary variable which assumes 1 if the node
covers the demand point at the period of time
, or 0 otherwise;
binary variable which assumes 1 if the demand
point is not covered at the period of time , such a path
or 0 otherwise;
decision variable which assumes 1 if the arc
is in the path which connects
the sensor node to the sink node at the period
of time , or 0 otherwise;
decision variable which assumes 1 if the sensor
node is activated at the period of time , or 0
otherwise;
decision variable which assumes 1 if the sensor
node is active at the period of time , or 0
otherwise;
penalty factor incurred by do not cover the demand
point .
The energy consumed by each node at the period of time
is given by (3). This energy is calculated based on the energy
spent by the activation, maintenance, reception and transmission
operations
(3)
The mono-objective ILP formulation that imposes full cov-
erage for the DCCP is presented next.
The objective function which has been modeled for mini-
mizing the energy consumed in the WSN at each period of time
is shown in (4)
(4)
in which stands for the problem decision variable vector:
.
The constraints (5)–(8) address the coverage problem: the
constraint (5) guarantees that at least sensor nodes cover each
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 11, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
demand point; the constraint (7) imposes that a sensor node can
only cover a demand point if it is active; and the constraint (8)
ensures that the variable is binary
(5)
(6)
The set of constraints (9)–(12) handles with the connectivity
problem. The constraints (9) and (10) ensure that there is at least
one path between each active sensor node and the sink node. The
constraints (11) and (12) allow only active nodes for building
(9)
(10)
(11)
(12)
Finally, the constraint (13) establishes the lower bound for the
energy consumed in each node at a period of time
(13)
The solution for this problem consists of finding the set
of sensor nodes which must be active at each
period of time . This solution can be generated periodically or
when it is necessary to redesign the WSN. It indicates which
nodes are responsible for covering each of the demand points,
while ensuring at least one path between the active sensors and
the sink node.
It should be noticed that this formulation has been stated, in
references [7], [20], in the form of an ILP problem in order to
allow the usage of linear programming solvers like CPLEX or
GPLK (GNU Linear Programming Kit).
B. Multiobjective Statement
The problem statement described in Section IV-A has been
reformulated as a multiobjective optimization problem, which
is handled by a multiobjective genetic algorithm.
The objective function shown in (4) has been rewritten, con-
sidering that the optimization procedures that will be employed
no longer need a linear formulation. The new energy consump-
tion function, which should be minimized, is shown in (14)
(14)
MARTINS et al.: A HYBRID MULTIOBJECTIVE EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH FOR IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF WSNS
in which: cost of the minimum path between the node and
the sink node at the period time .
The main idea of this function is to minimize the total energy
consumed in the network, in order to save energy for extending
its lifetime. The function considers the energy required for acti-
vating the nodes and for keeping them working. Besides, a term
which expresses the minimum cost between a sensor and the
sink node is included in the function.1 This parameter is adopted
for penalizing the sensor nodes in which the path for reaching
the sink node is excessively expensive. The arcs which compose
the graph in which the search is performed are those ones whose
lengths are not higher than the maximum communication radius
of a transmitter node.
Eq. (14) is an alternative way of representing the network en-
ergy consumption. The main difference between this model and
the one shown in (3) and (4) is that it is possible to include the
cost of the minimum cost path in (14), since it is not necessary
to ensure that the function is linear. The inclusion of helps
in the topology design, since it indicates the routing pathways
between the sensors and the sink node. Additionally, the mini-
mization of tends to reduce the energy spent for transmit-
ting data, since it is proportional to the distance between the
nodes.
In the multiobjective formulation, the constraint given in (5)
is relaxed as an objective function, which aims to control the
coverage of the network. This objective function, which is mod-
eled as a “noncoverage” penalty function that should be mini-
mized, is shown in (15)
(15)
in which:
“noncoverage” penalty factor;
number of demand points which are not covered by
any sensor at the period of time ;
penalty factor for the number of active sensors.
The purpose of this function is to allow the minimization
of the area which is not covered by the network. This is per-
formed by finding the number of points which are not covered
by any sensor inside the sensing area.2 Besides, the number of
sensor nodes which are active is also included in the function
in order to differentiate two networks with the same coverage:
if two networks cover the same number of demand points, the
one which requires a lower number of sensors for ensuring such
a coverage tends to be preferable. These two terms (number of
covered points and number of active sensors) are joined using a
weighted sum with weights and . Although this delay time is not null, it is not considered in
The relaxation of the coverage constraint as an objective func-
tion is useful in the cases in which it is not necessary to maintain
full coverage all the time: some of the coverage can be lost for
increasing the network lifetime. This suggests a tradeoff, cov-
erage versus lifetime, which cannot be addressed by the mono-
objective version of the problem.
1The cost of each arch is given by the transmission power between the nodes.
2Such as described in the beginning of the section the sensing area is dis-
cretized in a finite set of equally spaced demanding points.
549
V. MULTIOBJECTIVE ONLINE HYBRID
ALGORITHMS—MULTIONHA
Mono-objective approaches for the DCCP problem often look
for networks which ensure connectivity, consuming low energy
and providing full coverage. Although it is an ideal condition,
the full coverage is not necessarily a hard constraint. In several
situations some noncoverage can be accepted in order to im-
prove the network lifetime.
The multiobjective approach proposed in this paper allows
this type of tradeoff, since the full coverage constraint is relaxed
as a “noncoverage” objective function, (15), which should be
minimized jointly with the energy consumption function, (14).
The set of Pareto-optimal solutions which constitute the out-
come of the multiobjective algorithm provides additional infor-
mation to the designer: the tradeoff between energy consump-
tion and network coverage.
The Multiobjective On line Hybrid Algorithm (MultiOnHA),
that is proposed in this paper for addressing the multiobjective
DCCP, combines a global strategy, which rebuilds the whole
network, with a local strategy, which provides a solution of
lower computational cost for reestablishing the coverage and
connectivity in the neighborhood of a node that has failed.
The global strategy, which considers the full WSN in design,
has the advantage of restructuring the network considering the
energy situation of all sensor nodes. It makes possible to find the
optimal solution for each situation. However, as a drawback, this
strategy is not scalable in time, and can require high computa-
tional time for obtaining a solution.
On the other hand, the local strategy only considers the neigh-
borhood of a failed node for finding a new solution. It reduces
the number of candidate solutions which are achievable by the
algorithm, but it is able to offer a solution much faster than the
global algorithm.
It is important to emphasize that both optimization strategies
are executed at the sink node. This architecture has been chosen
because it is more efficient with regard to power consumption:
the sensor nodes, which have limited processing and energy ca-
pabilities, become responsible for sensing, receiving and trans-
mitting data tasks only (no additional energy is required for
processing optimization algorithms). On the other hand, this ar-
chitecture has the drawback of causing a delay time (latency),
which is the time required for a sensor to detect the failure of a
neighbor sensor, send this information through the network to
the sink node, and receive the solution for the problem (the in-
dication of which sensor nodes should be activated for reestab-
lishing the coverage).3
the cases handled in this work, under the assumption that it is
irrelevant when compared to the dynamics of the physical phe-
nomena which are measured in most practical cases (tempera-
ture, pressure, humidity, etc.). However, the latency should not
be ignored in the cases in which the quantities can vary consid-
erably in short time periods.
3The required computation time for performing such an optimization is not
considered as an extra delay time, since it would be required in any configuration
of network information processing.
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A. Multiobjective Global Strategy—MGoDA
The global strategy of MultiOnHA is performed by the
NSGA-II [9], which is employed for solving the Coverage
Problem based on a Set Coverage Problem [20]. It uses a min-
imum path algorithm for building trees which guarantee connec-
tivity. This strategy is called Multiobjective Global on-Demand
Algorithm, or simply MGoDA. It is referred as on-demand
because its execution is triggered by the hybrid algorithm.
The proposed algorithm has been built as a binary multiob-
jective GA. The solutions are encoded as binary vectors of di-
mension , in which any bit defines the status of the sensor
node (1 for active and 0 for inactive). Such solutions are eval-
uated using the functions shown in (14) and (15). The crossover
is performed using Single-Point Crossover.
A problem-specific mutation operator, so-called Density
Control Mutation or simply DCM, is proposed in this paper for
performing mutation inside NSGA-II. Let be the area of the
region which will be monitored, be the circular sensing area
of a sensor and be the coverage stipulated by the designer.
The minimum number of sensors which must be
active for covering at a coverage level is given by
(16)
After selecting a solution for suffering mutation, the number
of sensor nodes which are active in , , is determined.
Based on and , the DCM performs mutation con-
sidering the following rules:
• If , then DCM selects at random one
sensor which is inactive in and activates it.
• If , then DCM selects at random one
active sensor in and turns it off.
• If , then DCM selects at random one
active sensor in and one inactive sensor in and swaps
their status.
From these rules, it is possible to see that DCM employs
problem-based knowledge for improving the NSGA-II for the
DCCP problem. The operator “fixes” solutions which activate
more (or less) sensors than the required. It is useful for reducing
the energy consumption and ensuring the network coverage of
the network.
The proposed algorithm employs the same fitness assign-
ment (fast nondominated sorting), selection method (binary
stochastic tournament) and niche scheme (crowding distance
assignment) of the original NSGA-II [9].
This algorithm delivers as outcome a set of solutions which
are efficient with regard to the solutions evaluated during the
evolution process. Each of these solutions is a set of active sen-
sors, which leads to different energy consumption and coverage
for the network. Furthermore, a Dijkstra algorithm is executed
over each of the nondominated solutions for building such a
communication tree. The weight of any arc in the Dijk-
stra algorithm is assigned by the following rule:
(17)
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 11, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
in which:
weight considered by the Dijkstra algorithm for the
arc at the period of time ;
current which is required for transmitting data
from to (related with the power consumed for
transmitting data);
penalty factor which models the energy required
for activating a sleeping node .
The rule described above prioritizes the choice of arcs in the
following order:
• Both sensors are active.
• One of the sensors is active.
• None of the sensors is active.
This sequence avoids the careless activation of sleeping nodes:
the use of a sensor node which is currently active is always
preferable to wake up an inactive sensor. The adoption of the
individual minimum path for each active sensor node is useful
for eliminating the overload of nodes which are nearer from the
sink node. Overloaded nodes tend to have a lower lifetime, since
they spend much energy working as pathway for the other nodes.
Finally, it is necessary to choose a single solution which is
to be implemented, from this Pareto-set. This decision-making
is based on a variable , which is defined by the designer,
and indicates the minimum coverage level which is admissible
for the problem. It is performed by the following steps:
1) Sort the nondominated solutions in ascendant order of
consumed energy.
2) Make .
3) Evaluate the th solution.
4) If the minimum coverage presented by the th solution
is not lower than , then choose the solution and
stop the process.
5) Otherwise, make and go to step 3.
This process chooses the solution which expends the min-
imum energy for ensuring a coverage level greater than or equal
to the minimum acceptable one.
The parameter can be chosen in such a way that net-
work lifetime is improved and the technical specifications for
the system (minimum coverage) are kept valid.
All the tasks described above (NSGA-II, Communication
Tree Construction and Decision-making) compose the MGoDA.
B. Local Strategy—LoA
The local strategy of MultiOnHA, which is also called Local
On line Algorithm or LoA, is executed always when part of the
coverage is lost, due to failures in the active nodes [20]. Let
be the sensor which has failed, be the parent of and be
the set of sons of (the notion of parent and son can be derived
from the rooted tree structure, assuming that the sink node is the
root). The algorithm chooses a new node for replacing ,
based on the minimization problem shown in (18)
(18)
MARTINS et al.: A HYBRID MULTIOBJECTIVE EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH FOR IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF WSNS 551

Since the neighborhood of is usually small, it is possible to • Solution achieved by the proposed algorithm considering
evaluate all neighbor nodes and choose the one which minimizes (labeled as mult-0.70).
this function. • Solution achieved by the mono-objective hybrid algorithm
The main purpose of LoA is to reconnect all the sensors in proposed in [20] (labeled as mono).
to the sink node, by adding a single new active sensor. If it is not • Solution achieved by the commercial software Ilog
possible, the algorithm calculates the shortest path between the CPLEX [15] when solving the ILP statement shown in
nodes in and the sink node, with the weight of arcs defined Section IV (labeled as CPLEX)4. It should be noticed that
as shown in (17). In this case, all the inactive nodes which are the CPLEX was applied only for solving the ILP problem.
present in the shortest paths are activated in order to reestablish It is important to say that a NSGA-II version using Flip Muta-
the network coverage and connectivity. tion instead of DCM has been also tested. The results achieved
by this approach are not presented here since the algorithm has
C. The MultiOnHA been clearly outperformed by the one which employs DCM for
The structure of the multiobjective hybrid algorithm (Multi- performing mutation.
OnHA), which combines the MGoDA and LoA described early in The sensor nodes have been placed at random in a 50 m 50
this section, is shown in Algorithm 1. Initially, the MGoDA algo- m square, following an uniform probability distribution. Each
rithm is executed for finding an initial solution. Then, after each sensor node is based on the commercial device MICA2 [22],
node failure, the LoA is performed in order to try to restore the and has the following features:
WSN coverage and connectivity. In each simulation time unit, • Sensing radius: 15 m.
both the number of active nodes and the total power consump- • Communication radius: 25 m.
tion in the current period are compared with the number of active • Activation energy (AE): 5 mAh.
nodes and the power consumption in the previous period. If the • Maintenance energy (ME): 13 mAh.
differences obtained are higher than prespecified thresholds, then • Transmission energy (TE): 20 mAh.
MGoDA is executed for improving the current configuration. • Reception energy (RE): 2 mAh.
Some comments should be presented about the relationship
Algorithm 1 MultiOnHA between the geometry of the area to be covered, the location of
the nodes, and the role that will be played by each node. The
inputs: set of sensor nodes , sink node , set of arcs
problem of node density control appears in situations where a
which connect the sensor nodes, set of arcs which connect
the sensor nodes to the sink node, set of demand points , large number of nodes are placed within the area to be covered,
sensing radius and minimum admissible coverage with some redundancy of nodes covering the demand points.
Usually, the sensors of the network which are near to the sink
1: procedure are used for routing and sensing, and the nodes which are far
2: ; initial WSN away from the sink are used only for sensing (they are likely to
be leaves on the routing tree). This means that the energy man-
3: while do
agement for improving the network timelife is likely to have, as
4: ; returns the index of a fail node bottleneck nodes, the ones nearby the sink node and, in some
when a failure occurs or otherwise cases, also the nodes within some critical paths which are the
5: if then only alternatives for carrying the information coming from large
portions of the network. This is the pattern of the end of lifetime
6: ;
phenomena which appears in the examples presented in this sec-
7: ; tion: the network ceases of satisfying the coverage constraints
8: if then when the nodes that are near to the sink run out of energy.
The genetic algorithm, which is executed inside MGoDA, has
9: been tuned with the following parameters:
10: end if • Population size: 300 individuals.
• Number of generations: 150 generations.
11: end if
• Crossover probability: 0.90 per pair.
12: end while • Mutation probability: 0.20 per individual.
13: end procedure A detailed description about the mono-objective hybrid algo-
rithm which is used for comparison can be seen in [20]. Since it
VI. RESULTS considers the coverage as a hard constraint it looks for solutions
which keep the coverage as close from 100% as possible.
Tests have been performed for several network instances, with
The commercial optimization package CPLEX has been used
different sizes. The data of the instances considered here can be
for solving the mono-objective ILP formulation of the problem
found in [21]. In this paper, an instance with 100 sensor nodes
shown in Section IV. Since CPLEX uses a deterministic enu-
is presented for illustrating the performance of the proposed ap-
merative method, it reaches the global optimum for the mono-
proach. Four solutions have been compared:
objective problem. However, the required running time by the
• Solution achieved by the proposed algorithm considering
(labeled as mult-0.95). 4For mono and CPLEX it is assumed mn = 1:00.
552
Fig. 2. One hundred sensor nodes—coverage versus network lifetime.
Fig. 3. One hundred sensor nodes—consumed energy versus network lifetime.
enumerative method for solving a problem instance increases
exponentially with the number of nodes, what makes this ap-
proach the slowest one (and not suitable for high dimension
problems).
Each method (except CPLEX) has been executed 33 times,
and the results which are presented here are the mean ones. It
has been considered a tolerance of 3% in the minimum coverage
levels specified for each method.
Figs. 2 and 3 show the performance of the solutions achieved
by the tested approaches for coverage versus lifetime and
consumed energy versus lifetime, respectively. These results
are summarized in Table I, jointly with the computational time
spent for reaching each solution. The algorithms have been im-
plemented in Java 6.0 and the simulations have been performed
on a single core of an Intel Core2Duo T7300 processor, with
2GB of DDR2-RAM and Windows Vista. As expected, the
CPLEX solution was able to maintain the coverage level very
close to 100%. An interesting feature about this solution is that
it keeps an almost full coverage until 212 t.u. and, after this
point, the coverage decreases almost instantaneously, reaching
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 11, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
TABLE I
100 SENSOR NODES—RESULTS SUMMARY
0 at 241 t.u. The solution found by mult-0.95 ensures a coverage
level which is very close to 95% up to 257 t.u. After this time,
the coverage level decreases slowly until it reaches 0, what
happens near to 299 t.u. The solution observed in mult-0.70
follows the same behavior of the mult-0.95 solution, increasing
the network operation time due to the reduction in the coverage:
it keeps the minimum coverage above 70% for 317 t.u. and
the coverage reaches 0 after 381 t.u. The mono solution has
presented the worst lifetime among the three solutions.
From Table I, it should be noticed that the time spent by
CPLEX for reaching its best solutions is considerably higher
than the other methods (about 6000 times slower). The time
spent by the mono-objective hybrid algorithm and the multiob-
jective hybrid algorithm are comparable.
The results which have been observed suggest that the Mul-
tiOnHA is the most suitable technique among the three tested
ones, for solving medium and large instances of the DCCP in flat
WSNs. It is able to find solutions which are similar to CPLEX
spending a significant smaller computational time. When com-
pared to the mono-objective hybrid algorithm, it can provide
better solutions within similar processing time.
Another aspect which is important to notice is that the pro-
posed approach is particularly suitable for handling with prob-
lems that do not require full coverage for performing the des-
ignated task. The flexibility provided by this method (tradeoff
coverage versus lifetime) can be used for extending the opera-
tional time of the network keeping reasonable coverage.
Finally, Fig. 3 is not extensively analyzed in this section be-
cause it is just an alternative way of representing the results
shown in Fig. 2 (the network lifetime is clearly related with the
energy which is consumed in the network).
A. Computation Time Analysis
Such as described in the beginning of the results section, other
instances have been considered jointly with the 100 sensor node
instance, which is described above. In practice, five instance
sizes have been tested: 36, 49, 64, 81, and 100 sensor nodes.
The results which have been observed are very similar to the
ones presented for the 100 sensor instance.
Each of these instances has been solved 33 times using
the mono-objective hybrid algorithm and MultiOnHA, and
in a single run by CPLEX. The mean running time for each
instance has been used as an approximation for the mean case
computational complexity of each method.
MARTINS et al.: A HYBRID MULTIOBJECTIVE EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH FOR IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF WSNS
Fig. 4. Computation time for 36, 49, 64, 81, and 100 sensor node instances.
Fig. 4 shows the computation time of the three methods in the
five instance sizes considered (observe that the axis represents
the logarithm of the running time). It is easy to note that the
CPLEX computational time increases nearly exponentially with
the instance size. This behavior can render this approach useless
for large instance sizes. On the other hand, the computation time
increases much slower for the mono-objective hybrid algorithm
and the MultiOnHA. Therefore, it is expected that those methods
will still work even for very large instances.
VII. CONCLUSION
This paper proposes a multiobjective hybrid algorithm for
performing density control in flat WSNs. The algorithm is in-
tended to find solutions which ensure network connectivity and
keep the coverage above a certain level, while extending its
lifetime. The method combines a global on demand algorithm,
which redesigns the whole network when it is required, with
a local on line algorithm, which tries to reestablish the net-
work coverage and connectivity always when a sensor fails. The
choice for executing one or other of the algorithms is based
on the number of new active sensors and on the energy con-
sumption in the network (the local algorithm can be useful for
small changes, but it usually provides rough solutions when the
number of new active nodes is high).
The proposed MultiOnHA seems to be efficient for solving
the DCCP problem in flat WSNs. The employment of a multi-
objective approach has provided to the designer the additional
choice of losing some coverage in order to improve the network
lifetime. This additional degree-of-freedom constitutes a feature
of MultiOnHA algorithm that is not found in any former de-
sign algorithm. Results achieved for a test instance have shown
that the MultiOnHA can obtain solutions which are comparable
to the ones achieved by an exact method, spending a consider-
ably smaller computational time. It was also noted that it is pos-
sible to extend the operation time of the network considerably,
by reducing the minimum admissible coverage. The ILP and
mono-objective hybrid approaches cannot provide such flexi-
bility in the network design.
553
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554
Flávio V. C. Martins was born in Conselheiro Pena, Brazil, in 1982. He re-
ceived the B.S. degree in computer science in 2007 and the M.S. degree in
electrical engineering in 2009 from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
(UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Since 2009, he has been working towards the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at the UFMG.
From 2008 to 2009, he was with Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica
de Minas Gerais (CEFET-MG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil, as a substitute Pro-
fessor. His current research interests include wireless sensor network, network
design, evolutionary algorithms, combinatorial optimization, dynamic systems,
and multiobjective optimization.
Eduardo G. Carrano was born in Divinópolis, Brazil, in 1981. He received
the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Universidade Federal de São
João Del Rei (UFSJ), São João Del Rei, Brazil, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo
Horizonte, Brazil, in 2007.
From May 2006 to May 2007, he was with Center for Intelligent Systems,
Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal, as a Visiting Student. From September
2007 to January 2008, he was a Postdoctorial Researcher at the Department of
Mathematics, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Since January 2008, he
has been with the Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Minas Gerais,
Belo Horizonte, Brazil, as an Assistant Professor. His current research interests
include network design, combinatorial optimization, evolutionary algorithms,
multiobjective optimization, optimization theory, algorithm evaluation, and dy-
namic systems.
Elizabeth F. Wanner received the B.S. degree in mathematics in 1994 and the
M.Sc. degree in pure mathematics in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil,
in 2006.
She is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Computer En-
gineering, Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Minas Gerais, Belo Hor-
izonte, Brazil. Her current research interests include evolutionary computation,
global optimization, constraint handling techniques for evolutionary algorithms,
and multiobjective optimization.
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 11, NO. 3, MARCH 2011
Ricardo H. C. Takahashi (M’95) was born in Ipatinga, Brazil, in 1965. He
received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Univer-
sidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1989 and
1991, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Uni-
versidade de Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil, in 1998.
From 1992 to 2002, he was with the Department of Electrical Engineering,
UFMG, and he has been with the Department of Mathematics, UFMG, since
2002. He is the author of more than 50 journal papers and 100 conference pa-
pers, and has advised 12 Ph.D. theses. His main research interests include the
fields of optimization theory (including evolutionary computation and multicri-
terion optimization), computational intelligence, and optimization-based con-
trol theory.
Geraldo R. Mateus received the M.S. degree in computer science and the Ph.D.
degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1980 and 1986,
respectively.
He is Full Professor of Computer Science at the Federal University of Minas
Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He spent 1991 and 1992 at the University of
Ottawa, Canada, as a visiting Researcher. He is a member of INFORMS, IFORS,
SBC, SIAM and SOBRAPO. He has published over 200 scientific papers, 40
journal papers and book chapters and 2 books, and is a leader of several national
and international projects. He has worked as a consultant for some companies
such as Usiminas, CVRD, MBR, Telemig, Telemar, France Telecom, Embratel.
His research interests span network optimization, combinatorial optimization,
algorithms, logistic, transport, and telecommunication.