Optimization of Rainfall Sensor Network Layout Based on the Correlation Coefficient Method

The unreasonable layout of rain sensor networks results in various problems, such as the redundancy of observation nodes, large daily maintenance overhead, and the difficulty of solving faults in real time. A sensor network optimization algorithm based on the correlation coefficient method is proposed in this work. First, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient is adopted to calculate the correlation of each node, and computing results are stored in databases. Second, the nodes with a significant correlation with other nodes are selected, and historical data are used to verify the selected nodes. Finally, we improve the proposed method by introducing a subregion calculated using the DEM and growing tree method. Experiment results show that the proposed method can achieve an accurate prediction of rainfall in an entire region with the optimization of the layout of observation nodes. Keywords-Rainfall sensor network; Correlation coefficient; Rainfall forecast; Spatial correlation style