Abstract: We study in this paper the problem of minimizing the number and the locations of deployed cameras in visual sensor networks where to objective is to monitor a set of targets with a predefined quality level. To this end, we first propose a mathematical programming formulation, based on mixed-integer linear programming (MILP), which is designed to provide optimal solutions in case where the deployment area is represented through a set of discrete potential locations of the cameras. Due to the combinatorial nature of such problems, finding exact solutions entails a tremendous computational cost. Consequently, we introduce various suboptimal solution approaches, based on a number of well-known metaheuristics, such as particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithms. Numerical results show PSO succeeds to find the best solutions in the majority of considered scenarios. Furthermore, even for large instances, it provides better feasible solutions than those returned the MILPs after a significant amount of time.
