Abstract
Heterogeneous wireless sensor network (heterogeneous WSN) consists of sensor nodes with different ability, such as different computing power and sensing range. Compared with homogeneous WSN, deployment and topology control are more complex in heterogeneous WSN. In this paper, a deployment and topology control method is presented for heterogeneous sensor nodes with different communication and sensing range. It is based on the irregular sensor model used to approximate the behavior of sensor nodes. Besides, a cost model is proposed to evaluate the deployment cost of heterogeneous WSN. According to experiment results, the proposed method can achieve higher coverage rate and lower deployment cost for the same deployable sensor nodes. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.