A novel minimal exposure path problem in wireless sensor networks and its solution algorithm

The original minimal exposure path problem in wireless sensor networks did not consider path constraint conditions. To consider the actual demand, this article proposes a minimal exposure path problem that requires the passage of the path through the boundary of a certain region. In this situation, because a corresponding weighted graph model cannot be developed, the methods that are used to solve the original minimal exposure path problem (the grid method and the Voronoi diagram method) are ineffective. Thus, this article first converts the problem into an optimization problem with constraint conditions. Because of the difficulty in finding a solution due to the model’s high nonlinearity and high dimensional complexity, as well as the special characteristics of the problem, a hybrid genetic algorithm is proposed to find the solutions. This article also provides a proof for the convergence of the designed algorithm. A series of simulation experiments demonstrates that the designed optimization model with constraints and the hybrid genetic algorithm can effectively solve the proposed minimal exposure path problem.