A Systematic Layout Planning of Visualizing Devices on a Non-rectangular Plane by Genetic Heuristics

Abstract

As the new era of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) has come, it makes the visualizing of a plane possible. The proposed research focuses on how to plan the locations of RFID readers in a non-rectangular plane such that regions with or without forbidden blocks can be fully monitored by using a well developed RFID system under the spending of a minimum cost. An algorithm constitutes of three phases is used to obtain the optimal devices’ layout planning. In the beginning, we scrutinize a non-rectangular plane and its forbidden blocks so that a general grid-scheme can be applied. Secondly, the linear programming (LP) approach is applied to decide the number of RFID readers needed. At last, a hybrid genetic algorithm (GA) is used to find the appropriate locations for these designated number of RFID readers. The overall cost of deploying RFID readers and the total monitored region of the proposed RFID system are recorded. They are two key performance indexes to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method. Simulation results show the proposed method has high efficiency on dealing RFID readers’ planning problems in visualizing a non-rectangular plane.