Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Since radio coverage optimization provides many remarkable benefits for wireless network deployment, it is emerging as an attractive topic with a lot of literature research (Tretyakova, Seredynski, & Bouvry, 2016; Wang, Wu, Chen, Gao, & Chen, 2017; Kanaris, Sergiou, Kokkinis, Pafitis, Antoniou, & Stavrou, 2019). The wireless network of sensing applications is usually installed in complex geographical areas where are so hard to approach, if not impossible, composed of various landform, heterogeneous vegetation (Marija, Dimitar, & Sonja, 2011). Consequently, coverage strategies must be taken into topographic complexity for better estimation results. Several studies on the propagation model took into account irregular terrain effects. Authors proposed algorithms and a graphics tool enabling coverage estimation of the public mobile communications network. The quality of radio wave signals in 2G/3G/4G technology was evaluated with respect to the impact of terrain heterogeneity (Christoph, 1968; Popoola, Atayero, & Faruk, 2018; Granda, Azpilicueta, Vargas-Rosales, Celaya-Echarri, Lopez-Iturri, Aguirre,& Falcone, 2018). The investigation on coverage enhancement for distributed mobile sensors was conducted. Coverage strategies for WSNs in a three-dimensional (3D) or 2.5D environment were also investigated in (Christoph, 1968; Aliyu, Abdullah, Chizari, Sabbah, &Altameem, 2016; Rey Carrión, Juan-Llácer,& Rodríguez, 2019; Juan Llacer, Rodriguez, Molina Garcia Pardo, Pascual García, & Martínez Inglés, 2019) aiming at improving the reliability of simulation in reality.
In the last decade, researches on applications of cellular automata (CA) has focused on several main directions as following. Almost studies in energy-saving technology for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) aim at design a wireless node can self-organize based on communication state or switching between states to reduce the energy consumption of network and prolong the time service of networks (Banerjee, & Saxena, 2013). Besides, many papers present the routing aspect in WSNs based on the CA technique. These researches focus on how to implement proper models and the simulated network protocol and topology. A lot of research also addresses the related issues of encryption technique to enhance the security for data communication. On another approach, many surveys show the research topics in the optimization of coverage based on a cellular approach that attracts so many researchers. They work on both sensing and communication coverage of nodes that were introduced in so many technical papers (Cunha, Silva, Loureiro, &Ruiz, 2005).
In recent years, large-scale wireless network designs have been emerged as an attractive topic because of the current innovation solutions such as LoRa and sensor technology progresses (Semtech Corporation. 2016; Truong, Pottier, & Huynh, 2018).For wireless long-range communication in order of kilometers based on LoS condition, Semtech’sLoRa technology as an example, the obstacles can lock the signals somewhere that is not tractable by hand. For this reason, a visual CAD tool helps to facilitate node deployment with respect to geophysical topology for efficient radio coverage.
The major motivation of this work is for optimizing radio coverage in a wireless sensing network, with the least number of nodes but the largest communication coverage for communication within the network. An efficient toolsetis presented for wide-area low-power wireless sensor network deployment in which radio communication links are based on LoS condition, for example, LoRa (Semtech Corporation, 2016). There are three parallel algorithms are proposed for node deployment aiming at maximizing communication coverage taking into account geographical areas. The novel asset of this work in comparison to alternative solutions is combining cellular automata technology and high-performance computing on GPUsin order to optimize the radio coverage by computing the appropriate node position, especially for wireless long-range communication network.