A bi-objective harmony search approach for deploying cost-effective multi-hop communications over large-area wildfires

Global phenomena such as the climate warming and the consequently growing scales of wildfires motivate the need for computationally efficient tools and frameworks for assisting brigade commanders in their coordination and management duties. However, the current worldwide economical situation usually imposes severe budgetary constraints that ultimately impact on the inventory of available firefighting resources and support equipment. In this context this manuscript presents a novel meta-heuristically empowered scheme which determines the position and model of a number of wireless communication relays to be deployed over a large-scale wildfire area under a Pareto-optimal strategy: to balance between coverage and cost of the deployment. The system model also allows for multi-hop links among the brigades operating on the area. Specifically, Harmony Search heuristics are utilized to iteratively refine the position and models of the relays. Simulation results over synthetic scenarios are discussed, from which future research lines stem towards formulations of increased realism including the allocation of radio channels and orography-aware coverage areas.