7th IEEE International Workshop on Performance and Management of Wireless and Mobile Networks
Wi-Design: A Modelling and Optimization Tool for
Wireless Embedded Systems in Buildings
Alan McGibney, Antony Guinard, Dirk Pesch
Nimbus Centre for Embedded Systems Research,
Cork Institute of Technology
Cork, Ireland
alan.mcgibney@cit.ie, antony.guinard@cit.ie, dirk.pesch@cit.ie
Abstract—As wireless embedded systems become more and more
common and used across many application domains there is a
need for modeling and design tools to support the deployment
process. Although a significant amount of research has been
carried out in the area of protocol design, middleware and
energy, packaging and embedded systems design, there remains a
lack of support tools for designers and system integrators when
deploying complex indoor wireless infrastructures (Wi) to
support site specific applications. In this paper we present a
modeling tool known as Wi-Design that was developed to provide
deployment support for engineers and system integrators when
planning a wireless sensor infrastructure with particular focus on
in building wireless applications. We show how the tool can
simplify the deployment process and provide enhanced
confidence in wireless deployments.
Keywords-Design tools; Wireless Sensor Network Design;
Propagation Modeling; Optimization tools for deployment
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are becoming more and
more common as a mechanism for capturing environmental
data and interacting with the physical environment both for
commercial and military applications. Recently industry has
been focusing efforts on harnessing this technology for
monitoring and control applications within buildings. These
applications cover aspects such as lighting, safety and security,
environment monitoring, energy and general building
management and operations. However the planning,
implementation and management of wireless sensor networks
is a complex task requiring a broad spectrum of disciplines
such as wireless networking, information management and
embedded systems engineering to be successful [1]. A
significant amount of research has been carried out in the area
of protocol design, middleware and energy, packaging and
embedded systems design but there is still a significant lack of
tools that make it easy for designers and system integrators to
develop and deploy reliable yet complex indoor wireless
infrastructures (Wi) to support site specific applications.
This paper presents a modeling tool we call Wi-Design that
was developed to provide deployment support for engineers
and system integrators when planning a wireless sensor
The authors wish to acknowledge the support of Science Foundation
Ireland under the 06-SRC-I1091 ITOBO project in funding work reported in
this paper.
978-1-61284-928-7/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE 640
P2MNET 2011, Bonn, Germany
infrastructure for in-building wireless applications. We show in
this paper how Wi-Design simplifies the design process of
wireless sensor networks and creates robust deployments
compared to the traditional ad-hoc approach. The remainder of
the paper is structured as follows, section II will describe
current approaches and associated problems for indoor
deployments and will also provide an overview of currently
available planning tools. Section III will describe the Wi-
Design toolset and highlight the key elements for wireless
system design. As automating the design process is essential
for non expert users the optimization kernel will be described
in more detail in Section IV. Section V will present an example
design and Section VI will conclude the paper.
II. RELATED WORK
A. Deployment Approaches
Deploying WSN in indoor environments is a complex task.
A successful design can be considered as determining the best
combination of hardware, network topology, operation modes,
configuration, quantity and position of nodes that meet the
application objectives. The most significant consideration that
impacts the quantity, position and topology of the wireless
infrastructure is the layout of the building itself. The building
structure and material types have a considerable influence on
Radio Frequency (RF) propagation from devices through the
environment. To include this complexity a designer can
typically take one of the following options, an ad hoc design, a
site survey or a propagation modeling tool.
A common technique employed by system integrators when
deploying an indoor WSN is a “try and see” approach. The
network is built by placing wireless nodes into what seems to
be good positions. Tests are carried out to evaluate signal
coverage and nodes are moved or added to improve network
performance. A few iterations are often necessary to get a
workable design. This approach relies heavily on the designer’s
experience, is time consuming and provides an optimal solution
only by chance. Moreover this approach rapidly becomes
unmanageable as the network size grows. Some hardware
venders such as EnOcean provide range planning guidelines
that can be used when deploying their products [2]. These
guidelines can be used to estimate the number and position of
devices but they are based on an idealized (circular) coverage
range which is not realistic in typical buildings with walls and
other obstacles and therefore the actual range can vary
significantly between sites. Often the installers of wireless
systems in buildings, who are building system integrators or
often even only electricians, have little or no experience with
wireless technologies and hence this approach can lead to the
following problems:
• Under estimation of the number of devices (sensors,
repeaters or gateways) required to support the
application. This results in the supplier/distributer
deploying a system with poor performance and as a
result they may not only lose the confidence of their
client but also incur additional cost to repair the poorly
performing deployment.
• Over estimation of infrastructure requirements. To
ensure good performance the supplier may over
estimate the number of devices required to install the
system. This can result in an uncompetitive price for
the customer in relation to alternative, perhaps wired
systems available.
• To ensure reliability in large deployments labor
intensive site surveys, adjustments and re-designs may
be required. This is expensive and increases lead time
to deployment and can make the solution
uncompetitive in comparison to alternative solutions.
A number of WSN deployments within industrial plant
environments have been carried out [3]-[5]. In these research
works, accurate wireless communication characteristics
prediction is regarded as being a key factor to a successful
WSN design. In each scenario, this is achieved by proceeding
to a site survey, which is a suitable solution considering the
limited size of the WSN deployment (varying from 5 to 45
nodes). While these experiments took place in extremely harsh
environments for WSN, the results presented in [6] show that
the prediction of wireless signal characteristics is also required
within more traditional building environments. A site survey
consists of undertaking a measurement campaign within the
target environment. A significant amount of work is required to
carry out several measurement runs, collect and organize the
captured data and to perform a final evaluation. Hardware
providers such as Spinwave Systems [7] and Monnit [8]
provide a solution to enable a designer to assess the
connectivity with deployed sensors at different locations. A
drawback of proceeding to a site survey using these devices is
that several point-to-point measurements are needed at
different locations, which can become unmanageable as the
size of the network increases.
B. Existing Planning Algorithms and Tools
Previous research attempting to address the node
placement problem has largely focused on developing
techniques to ensure coverage and connectivity but has largely
focused on obstacle-free environments [9]-[14]. The studied
problem was simplified by assuming that both sensing and
communication ranges are circular. The idealized
communication characteristics of the wireless nodes,
combined with the fact that obstacles are not considered,
render these techniques inappropriate when positioning
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devices within building environments. An approach presented
in [15] includes obstacles from within the deployment
environment however fails to consider the complexity of radio
transmissions as it only uses a simple geometrical approach to
estimate connectivity and coverage area. A number of
proposals suggest methodologies to automate the selection of
node position for indoor environments [15]-[17]. Although
these proposals provide support on some aspects of the
difficult task of WSN design, there still remain a number of
drawbacks. As is often the case, many approaches use an
idealized propagation model [15] or at most an empirical
propagation model such as the Multi-Wall model [16][17].
Despite being computationally efficient, the Multi Wall model
only considers the direct line between transmitter and receiver
and often needs to be tuned for a specific environment in order
to get an accurate prediction of signal propagation in the
building. This leads to an increase in design time. A
methodology and software framework proposed in [16] aims
to address this issue. The proposed solution remains inflexible
as a fixed position is assumed for the sink node. In a large
building environment, many locations are appropriate for a
sink, in fact many applications support more than one sink.
Determining the best location for sink nodes is an optimization
problem that needs to be addressed for WSN design [18]. In
addition, the methodology proposed in [16] only considers the
design of WSN using single-hop communication. A
framework for rapid design and evaluation of WSN has been
developed in [19]. The framework incorporates a detailed
simulation environment which estimates the performance of
communication protocols and can be used to generate the
implementation code for the physical deployment. The tools
also include a mechanism to capture live measurement data
from nodes to tune simulations and adjust the design. The
model used to predict radio propagation characteristics does
not consider obstacles within the environment. Instead, the
signal attenuation is retrieved from analyzing live data from a
deployed WSN. The approach in [19] provides a
comprehensive simulation environment to test applications. It
does not focus on optimizing the position of nodes in indoor
environments and although the authors agree the use of a
feedback loop from live data is an important aspect of the
design lifecycle to validate and verify a design post
deployment, making it an integral part of the initial
deployment plan as a link quality estimation is similar to doing
an extensive site survey.
It is our opinion that incorporation of a design
methodology where radio propagation characteristics and
other requirements such as delays, interference and network
lifetime can be modeled with software tools offers a number of
advantages. Firstly it removes or reduces the need for costly
and time consuming site survey throughout the environment.
Planning tools ensure that a user, even with little experience
considers the impact of the deployment environment,
application requirements and configuration on network
performance. The design tool can also be used to evaluate
network expansion or the viability of new wireless
applications. Additionally the tools can be used to estimate
infrastructure cost for wireless applications even prior to the
construction of a building offering a mechanism to support
feasibility studies for new applications at the building design
stage.
III. THE WI-DESIGN TOOLSET
The Wi-Design toolset aims to improve on current
deployment practices for wireless networks with particular
focus on embedded applications within buildings. The design
procedure is supported with a CAD tool incorporating an
automatic design and optimization kernel to suggest the ideal
number, type, topology and more importantly positions of
network nodes based on user and application specific
requirements. The development of such a kernel is a non trivial
task as it must consider a multitude of design requirements
including signal coverage, connectivity, quality of service
requirements and network infrastructure. The current toolset
includes propagation modeling, channel characteristics and
optimization algorithms to aid a designer when planning a
wireless deployment.
A. Wi-Design Components
The Wi-Design toolset is composed of a number of
elements and tools that can be used for wireless infrastructure
design. These tool elements can be classified under three
categories of the design lifecycle, Requirements, Infrastructure
Design and Verification. Figure 1 shows the components of the
Wi-Design architecture, the following section will describe the
most important tool components but will focus on the
automated design algorithm in the optimization kernel.
Figure 1. The Wi-Design Toolset Architecture
1) Requirements
Before any design can be undertaken system requirements
must be captured. An integral part of these requirements is a
description of the environment where the network should be
deployed in order to accurately predict signal propagation, and
as a result, link quality between nodes. The design tool offers
drawing capabilities that enables a user to define the indoor
environment with basic features such as walls, doors and
windows. Material types that can influence the propagation can
also be defined. As drawing the environment can be very time
consuming Wi-Design also provides import tools to speed up
the process. To be in line with construction industry tools floor
plan described in AutoCAD format or Industry Foundation
Classes (IFC) can automatically be imported to the design tool.
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A large number of hardware platforms are available to choose
from for indoor wireless sensor network [20]. To assist the
designer with the wide choice of available hardware, a library
of components that shows differences between hardware
platforms has been integrated into the toolset. This provides the
user the ability to observe changes in a WSN design resulting
from a change of hardware platform. The device characteristics
currently considered with the hardware library includes device
type (sensor, actuator), manufacturer, cost, sensitivity
threshold, transmission power, operating frequency, maximum
bit rate, available channels and power consumption
characteristics. Application specific requirements need to be
considered for a WSN deployment. The approach proposed in
Wi-Design considers demand zones where devices should be
placed, the device classification (generator, repeater, sink),
sensing interval and transmission delays. These requirements
are used as design constraints within the optimization kernel
for the automated WSN design, the goal of the optimization is
to satisfy the user defined requirements.
2) Infrastructure Design
The main components of the toolset are associated with the
modeling and predictive tools for wireless communication with
a focus on building environments. The following describe the
sub-elements of the infrastructure design.
Propagation Modeling
As can be seen from the literature, the RF propagation
model is a fundamental part of deployment planning, therefore
the choice of propagation model is important. Based on the
reviewed literature and close investigation into existing indoor
propagation models it is clear that there is a trade-off between
computational complexity and model accuracy. Propagation
models used include simple path loss models which will greatly
reduce the quality of a solution particularly in a complex indoor
environment. For most indoor scenarios empirical models such
as the Empirical Motley-Keenan Model [21] are typically
chosen as they are easy to implement and can be evaluated
quickly. To improve the quality of the prediction more
complex ray tracing models can be used, however the higher
accuracy of ray tracing models comes at a price; the complexity
of the problem is increased and computation time can become
unacceptable. Wi-Design tools include the One Slope Model,
Multi-wall Model [22] and a Ray launching approach known as
the Motif Model [23]. The Motif model has been shown to be is
the most accurate of the three models while remaining
computationally acceptable for large scenarios [24] . The Motif
Model is our model of choice.
Topology Modeling
In building environments, sensors typically report their
readings to a centralized controller which is accessible through
one or many sink nodes. In such a one-to-many communication
paradigm each sensor has several alternative paths that can be
used to reach a sink node. A significant amount of research has
been done on routing protocols to identify the optimum paths.
In Wi-Design a fixed topology using primary routes only is
assumed, it is planned to extend this further by considering
disjoint paths as an optimization criteria in the future. The
current implementation of the Wi-Design tool models the
network topology that reflects a balanced network and primary
routes that should be used under normal operation of the WSN.
The mechanism used to build the network topology is
explained in Section IV.C.1).
Interference Modeling
Interference can play a major role in the quality of
communications in a building. Wi-Design provides a
mechanism to enable a designer to define an existing wireless
infrastructure that can interfere with wireless nodes. For
example by defining access point locations of an existing WiFi
network and allocated channels, the optimization algorithm can
consider this and will avoid channel interference and maximize
signal to noise ratio for the to be deployed infrastructure. This
can also enable the design to optimize channel selection pre-
deployment.
Visualization
The visualization tools of Wi-Design are important to
provide feedback to the user on deployment plans. This enables
the designer to visually assess a plan and make adjustments to
design constraints or requirements for example define areas
that should not be covered or with restricted access. Wi-Design
provides a user friendly interface to input and capture
requirements and provide 2D and 3D representations of the
building environment and associated coverage/connectivity
maps.
3) Verification
The Wi-Design toolset includes site survey tools that can be
linked directly back to the propagation models and hence verify
initial predictions. The tools also allow for the visualization of
network statistics when available enabling the designer to
monitor a deployed network for route changes and overall
network performance. The tools provide graphical views of
system performance that can be used to analyze the network
performance.
IV. OPTIMIZATION KERNEL
The real novelty of Wi-Design lies in the optimization
kernel. Existing tools provide a user with the ability to
manually select device positions and evaluate different
configurations of their proposed network. But it is the
integration of an optimization and design algorithm that
enables Wi-Design to automatically suggest an optimal solution
to the user’s site specific requirements with little configuration.
This allows even users with little or no experience of indoor
wireless deployments to create an optimal deployment plan. In
the following we describe our optimization approach and the
problem specific optimization criteria we consider for the
design algorithm.
A. Optimization Approach
The optimization techniques that have been applied to
wireless network design range from simple search methods
[25][26], Integer Linear Programming [27][28], Quadratic
Programming [29][30] and Genetic Algorithms [30]-[32]. The
most popular optimization approaches applied in the area of
wireless networks are direct search methods, mainly due to the
fact that they are easy to implement, flexible and robust [33].
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But scalability becomes an issue when the problem becomes
large. Based on the previous work we did on Evolution
Strategies [34] in the context of IEEE802.11 based wireless
network planning, we found that taking a global view of the
optimization problem produces poor designs when applied to
large design spaces. Evolutionary algorithms represent a
solution globally and as a result are unable to consider all,
often conflicting metrics as part of their solution. The
convergence becomes unpredictable and the quality of the
solution deteriorates [34].
Much attention has been given to game theoretic approaches
to problems in wireless sensor networks [35] (power control
games, self organizing networks). Game theoretical algorithms
are often implemented in agents playing a game to reach a
solution to a problem. Our proposed approach reduces the
wireless network design problem to a system of agents that
only have local knowledge of the environment playing a game
that achieves a (near) optimum solution regardless of problem
size. In our approach the optimization is not driven by one
global function but rather a global optimum will emerge as a
result of simple local decisions and interactions between
rational agents within the design environment.
1) Wi- Design Agent
In our wireless infrastructure design approach an agent is
representative of a wireless device trying to find its best
position within the environment by maximizing its personal
utility function. An agent has the ability to perceive its
environment, persisting for a long period of time, adapting to
change and being capable of taking on the goals of other
agents [36]. We consider a simple reflex, utility-based agent
(Figure 2). The main components of an agent are environment
percept, condition-action rules and utility function.
Figure 2. Agent Design for WSN Design
Figure 2 shows the architecture of the agents. The agent
encapsulates all constraints that have been defined during the
requirements phase including candidate node positions, target
zones, sensor positions and connectivity requirements. As all
this information is pre-processed and available to the agent it
accelerates the optimization process. The optimization is
modeled as an iterative game played by the agents competing
to maximize their utility, for this example the agent is
comparable to a sink node attempting to maximize the number
of associated sensor nodes. The agent incorporates general
rules pertaining to the problem being solved, such as agents
may only connect to a maximum number of end devices with a
specified sensitivity threshold or a maximum number of hops
have to be adhered too. The agent operates in a fully
observable environment where it has sufficient facts about it;
therefore a logical approach enables the agent to derive a plan
that is guaranteed to work. Once the agent knows what the
world looks like (agent percept) it can then use condition-
action rules to establish a connection between agent percept
and which action should be considered.
A game iteration begins with a single agent randomly
positioned within the design environment. From this position
the agent is aware of its communication range and the sensors
that are covered by this cell, the agent can evaluate the quality
of the communication to these sensor nodes (with additional
considerations such as energy usage, balanced usage). As the
agent is aware of the nodes that it cannot successfully act as a
gateway for, it can make a decision to add intermediate nodes
to aid in the communication, creating a multi-hop mesh
network or it can add another agent to cover the remaining
nodes. The agent uses its utility function to decide on what
action to take; as the agent is rational the only option is to take
the action that will increase its own utility.
The actions that an agent can take include Move, Split and
Die. The actions are also governed by general game rules such
as move has a higher priority than a split action. The agent can
either Move to a better location, Split, resulting in a new agent
being created or Die. The last action does not improve an
agent’s utility but improves the global optimal by eliminating
agents that are no longer necessary. It is only possible for an
agent to split when an agent cannot improve its utility with a
move action and there remain some unconnected nodes. In
some cases a split may occur before an agent (or neighboring
agents) has moved to an appropriate location that can be a
number of iterations ahead. This mechanism allows the
optimization algorithm to quickly converge toward an
adequate solution. But as agents are myopic and cannot
foresee the impact of other agents on their decision the Die
action can be taken. At this stage an agent can decide to die if
this action results in no sensors being left unconnected. The
algorithm converges when all sensors are connected to an
agent and a Pareto optimal solution has been reached i.e. no
agent can improve their own utility without impacting
neighboring agents. The utility function and optimization
mechanism are described in the following.
B. Single hop Scenario
For a scenario where a star configuration is required (only
single hop) the agent is representative of a sink device and has
a very basic objective, maximize the number of connected
nodes within the environment. The utility function (U) used is
shown in (1).
U = w1 RU − w2 OS − w3GC + w4 B (1)
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Where,
RU……………………Resource Utilisation
OS……………………Over Subscription
GC...…………………Global Coverage
B……………………..Balance Factor
wi……………………..Weighting Factor
The elements of the utility function include resource
utilization (RU) which is calculated as the ratio of successfully
connected nodes (based on link quality) to the number of
possible connected nodes (i.e. within maximum coverage
range). This element encourages an agent to move to a position
where it can connect to the most nodes within its range. An
assumption is made that in a situation where a node can
connect to multiple sink devices it will connect to the one with
the strongest link. Over subscription (OS) is used to include the
number of devices that an agent has ownership of (strongest
link) but for instance has a limit on the maximum number of
sensors it can cater for. By having this element the agent will
move to a location that reduces the overlap with other agents,
this also has a positive impact on signal to noise ratio for the
overall network. Global Coverage (GC) and Balance Factor (B)
are included within the utility function to balance the signal
coverage within the environment if all nodes are connected.
GC is calculated as the ratio of connected nodes to the
maximum possible nodes to connect too, this element supports
the minimum number of agents in the environment also. B is
calculated as the mean received signal of an agents overall
coverage map. The variables RU, OS, GC and B have
normalized values that are within the range [0, 1]. The last
element of the utility is the weighting factor. The weighting
factor is used to allocate priority to an agent’s objective
through the single utility function. For example a higher weight
should be put on maximizing resource utilization and as it is a
secondary goal a lower weight should be put on the balance
factor so it is less influential at the beginning of the
optimization process.
C. Multi-hop Scenario
The multi-hop scenario differs from its single-hop
counterpart as sensor nodes can act as forwarders and repeaters
can be used instead of sink nodes. In addition of finding the
optimal number and positions of agents (sink nodes) the
network topology must also be defined. Given a set of sensors
and a sink, several topologies can be created to connect the
sensors to the sink using multi-hop communication. As part of
the optimization kernel a topology building algorithm has been
developed. This is a prerequisite for a multi-hop scenario as the
network topology must be defined in order to gauge the quality
of an agent action. In addition the topology impacts the power
consumption of the sensor nodes. In order to estimate the
different levels of power consumption within the network, a
battery model has been developed. The following will first
describe the algorithm developed to build the multi-hop
topology followed by the battery model description and finally
the utility function used for the multi-hop WSN design
scenario.
 1) Topology Building Algorithm
Based on the position of the wireless devices and the
environment layout, the propagation model is used to predict
RF signal attenuation between the different wireless devices.
This information is used to predict link quality and is stored as
an asymmetric graph (connectivity graph) where nodes
represent wireless devices and an edge cost calculated as a
function of the predicted link quality. The topology building
algorithm extracts a set of sub-trees from the connectivity
graph. There is one sub-tree per sink node and each sub-tree
corresponds to a cluster within the network. The algorithm
determines to which cluster sensors should be associated to and
the network topology within each cluster.
Multi-hop WSN topologies provide several possibilities
which impact network performance in terms of link quality,
power consumption and communication delays. In order to
analyze long term large scale network performance, computer
simulation is typically used. However, using a simulation tool
for placement optimization is impractical as it requires long
processing time, is implementation specific based on network
and MAC layer protocols and requires expert knowledge of the
wireless networking domain and simulation tool itself. While
Wi-Design does not implement a suite of routing protocols as
part of its toolset, in order to validate the quality of a design it
is necessary to build a topology model. The topology model is
constructed based on the following metrics:
Link quality: a high quality link between devices is
assumed when the received signal strength is above a particular
threshold. Link quality is an important factor as a faulty or
unreliable link can cause packet retransmissions which affect
both lifetime and communication delays within the network. It
can also lead to route instability.
Power consumption: in multi-hop networks, reducing the
transmission power and therefore using more hops to reach a
destination reduces the individual power consumption of the
sensor nodes. However it increases the global energy
expenditure of the network due to the increased requirement for
forwarding sensor data [37]. In order to account for this and
reduce the global energy expenditure of the network, the
proposed approach builds the topology such that any sensor is
connected with the minimum number of hops to a sink, while
satisfying the requirement for reliable link quality.
Data forwarding traffic: most of wireless sensors energy
consumption is related to the radio activity [38]. Therefore a
share of a node’s energy usage depends of the traffic a node is
forwarding toward the access point. In order to avoid having
some nodes dying earlier than other which result in potential
bottleneck within the network the topology building algorithm
aims to harmonize data forwarding load among the different
sensors of the WSN.
2) Battery Model
During WSN operation, sensor nodes alternate between
active states when they perform their sensing and
communication tasks and deep sleep periods in order to save
energy. A sensor’s duty cycle is based on its application
requirements and the amount of traffic coming from other
sensors that needs to be forwarded to the gateway. In order to
predict energy consumption, a minimalistic battery model has
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been developed. The battery model combines duty cycle
parameters with the hardware power consumption
characteristics to provide an estimation of node lifetime. While
only providing a coarse estimation of a node lifetime, the
developed battery model is useful to compare energy
expenditure between nodes. The electric charge of a sensor
node EC, expressed in mAh, is calculated according to (2).
Then the expected lifetime of the wireless device is calculated
using (3).
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EC = × (t a × I a + t s × I s ) (2)
ta + ts
CC
NodeLifetime = (3)
EC
The active and deep sleep duration of one duty cycle are
represented by ta and ts and are expressed in seconds. Ia and Is
represent the current draw which is required by the wireless
device in active and deep sleep modes and is expressed in mA.
In active mode the radio chip is turned on and Ia is an average
of the current required to transmit and to receive. It is assumed
that when a node is active equal time is spent on transmitting
and receiving data. The current capacity of the battery CC is
expressed in mAh. NodeLifetime is expressed in hours.
3) Utility Function
The utility function provides a normalized equation that
reflects the quality of a network design. The observations about
network performance for building the multi-hop topology are
the foundation for the utility function development. Equation 4
shows the utility used by an agent to evaluate the success of an
action. It contains GC as described in the previous section as
connectivity remains the primary objective.
U = w1GC + w2 LQ + w3 L + w4 IC (4)
Where,
LQ………………....…Link Quality
L..………………….…Lifetime
IC…………………….Infrastructure Cost
Link Quality (LQ) reflects the average link quality within
the agent’s cluster. LQ is calculated as the average of the edge
cost of the agents cluster as predicted during the topology
building algorithm. This parameter promotes topologies with
strong, reliable communication links. Lifetime (L) is used to
represent the average lifetime of the sensors that are part of an
agent’s cluster. The sensors’ lifetime is affected by the network
topology and is calculated using the battery model presented
previously. Infrastructure Cost (IC) represents the cost
effectiveness of a cluster. IC is calculated as the ratio of sensor
devices over total number of devices required for the cluster.
This metric penalizes the addition of repeaters nodes and
instead promotes the use of existing sensors to act as repeaters.
This aims to reduce the infrastructure cost of a design.
Similarly to the single-hop scenario, the variables GC, LQ, L
and IC have normalized values in the range [0, 1], which
allows the utility to be tuned using the weighting factors in
order to allocate priority on an agent’s objective.
 V. CASE STUDY
The following describes a sample design that was carried
out using the Wi-Design tools. Figure 3 shows the structure of
the NIMBUS building at Cork Institute of Technology that was
used for the design. A wireless sensor network is required to
monitor temperature, light and humidity across the first floor of
the building (approx 2800 m2). After consultation with an
environmental engineer specific sensing positions have been
defined and input using the Wi-Design interface marked with a
red square on the floor plan shown in Figure 3. A total of 37
sensors are to be deployed operating at 2.4Ghz (IEEE802.15.4)
with a transmit power of 0dBm.
Figure 3. Nimbus Building Sensor Layout
The goal is to find the minimum infrastructure to support
reliable communication of data from 37 sensors distributed
through the floor plan to the data warehouse. Sensors can
communicate with a sink node which is intern is connected to
the back end data storage. The optimization must therefore
output the number and position of sink nodes and or repeaters
to meet these demands.
A. Single Hop Results
The Wi-Design tool was used to automatically optimize the
sink positions based on a star topology, the output of this
design is presented in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Single Hop Optimization Results
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A sensitivity threshold of -80dBm was selected to
guarantee connectivity as a result the automatic optimization
suggests a total of 6 sink nodes are required to successfully
connect all sensor devices. It can be seen from the figure that
all nodes are connected to a sink and the influence of the
balance factor has on the position of an agent. All agents are
close to the centre of the cluster of nodes they serve. Figure 5
shows the signal coverage of each sink as predicted by the
propagation model within the environment.
Figure 5. Single hop result showing signal coverage maps
B. Multi-hop Results
For the second part of the design the user wishes to assess if
a multi-hop topology was to be used what could be the saving
in terms of infrastructure cost. In order to maintain the same
connectivity requirements as the single-hop scenario, a
sensitivity threshold of -80dBm was selected. The size of a
cluster is constrained to 4 hops between any sensor and a sink.
Figure 6 presents the results of the design utilizing multi-hop
utility. As sensing nodes can be used as forwarders the
optimization suggests that a minimum of 2 sink devices are
required. A saving of 4 sink devices in comparison to a star
topology. The automatic design allows a user to rapidly
evaluate the impact of different design constraints such as the
limit of hops and topology configuration. The multi-hop
approach is currently being extended to include the impact of
network configuration on network lifetime estimation to
provide the designer with a more detailed evaluation of a
design with respect to functional requirements.
Figure 6. Multi hop Optimization Results
 VI. CONCLUSION
The paper presents a modeling and optimization tool set
that has been developed to address the need for deployment
planning support for in building wireless embedded
applications. The tool consists of a number of modules that
offer the user an easy to use modeling environment for
evaluating various network configurations. The paper also
described the automatic optimization algorithm that was
developed to enable even non expert users to generate a design
based on site specific application requirements. A case study of
a design was presented to show a sample design that was
undertaken using the toolset. Although components of the
design tool such as the propagation model has been validated
with real measurement, future work will involve validating the
Wi-Design outputs with a large scale sensor network
deployment within different application requirements. Wi-
Design tools can simplify the deployment process and provide
enhanced confidence in wireless deployments particularly for
indoor applications.
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