A Mixed Genetic Algorithm Strategy to Sensor Selection Problem in WSNs

Selecting k out of a given set say n of sensors to accomplish some tasks or meet some well-defined objectives is often modelled and solved as an optimization problem or through an exhaustive search. The later solution strategy is ideal for some small sizes of both n and k. However, this simplistic method becomes quite hard and resource intensive considering a network of randomly deployed wireless sensor networks (WSNs) comprising a fairly large size of nodes (n). In this paper, we employ and extend the conventional genetic algorithm (GA) technique by incorporating a more robust bivariate gene combination comprising both binary and continuous values to encode chromosomes in the solution space. Simulation results show the effectiveness of this method and serves to stimulate further research in the problem domain. © 2013 IEEE.