A new art gallery algorithm for sensor location

Locating sensors in2D can be often modeled as an Art Gallery problem. Unfortunately, this problem is NPhard, and no finite algorithm, even exponential, is known for its solution. Algorithms able to closely approximate the optimal solution and computationally feasible in the worst case are unlikely to exist. However this is an important problem and algorithms with “good” performance in practical cases are sorely needed. After reviewing the available algorithms, we propose a new sensors location incremental technique. The technique converges toward the optimal solution. It locally refines a starting approximation provided by an integer covering algorithm, where each edge is observed entirely by at least one sensor. A lower bound for the number of sensor, specific of the polygon considered, is used for halting the algorithm, and a set of rules are provided to simplify the problem.