The k-coverage and m-connected sensor placement problem in target-based wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is assessed here, where all target points must be covered by at least k sensor nodes and all senor nodes must be connected to the sink through at least m separate paths. The potential positions for placing sensor nodes are pre-specified. A new method based on the imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) is proposed to solve this dual featured problem. The possibility of immigration for colonies from weak to stronger empires is added to the standard ICA. Immigration promotes the ability of the Immigrant imperialist competitive algorithm (IICA) in exploration and prevents the early convergence to local minimums. The mathematical formulation is provided for the immigration process. In simulations, the 2D and 3D environments together with grid and random WSNs are of concern. The main issues of concern here consist of the placed sensor node count and the run time. The experimental results indicate that this proposed method applies less sensor nodes than its counterparts and requires less run time.
