2017 International Conference on Innovations in Information, Embedded and Communication Systems (ICIIECS)
SENSOR SELECTION IN AN AIRCRAFT ENGINE
USING GENETIC ALGORITHM
M. Lakshmi Dharani, S.J. Venkateswara Rao,
B. Abdul Rahim
Dept. of Electronic and Communication Engineering
Annamacharya Institute of Technology and Sciences
Rajampet, India.
lakshmidharani.dharani@gmail.com,
abdulrahimbepar@gmail.com
Abstract In aircraft engine large numbers of sensors are
installed to provide health condition information for proper and
congenial operation. The aircraft engine is associated with
different types of sensors and actuators and to overcome the
safety critical related problems redundant components are
added. Redundancy provides reliability to the system and
improves the fault tolerance capability of an aircraft engine. As
of now, X-by-wire technology is replacing mechanical
components with large number of electronic components. The
minimum of informative and cost effective sensors are selected to
monitor the optimum performance of the system. This selection is
effectively decided by utilizing optimization techniques. There
are different types of techniques available for implementation.
For complex and large component based systems selection is an
undaunting task and to overcome this problem, here we have
used Genetic Algorithm based technique with problem solving
through travelling salesman problem.
Index Terms Sensor Selection, Travelling Salesman Problem,
Genetic Algorithm.
I. INTRODUCTION
Optimization is defined as an act or process or methodology
for making a design or system or decision as fully perfect.
Particularly the mathematical procedures involved to find the
maximum of a function in the involved procedure. It is the
procedure applied to solve quantitative problems in disciplines
of physics, biology, engineering and economics. In a typical
optimization problem the goal is to find the values of
controllable factors determining the behavior of a design or a
system. For example a physical production or an investment
scheme etc,. The simplest of problems involving functions of a
single variable as input factor and is solved with differential
calculus [1]. There are different types of optimization
techniques like Ant Colony Algorithm, Partical Swam
Optimization, Genetic Algorithm, Biogeography Based
Optimization, etc,. There are several optimization heuristics
can be used for design optimization most of them are often
developed from greedy methods [2]. Here we have used
Genetic Algorithm for investigation and would like to modify
accordingly for better optimum results in sensor selection in
aircraft engine. The preceding section explains or reviews the
D Vishnuvardhan
Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engineering
JNTUA College of Engineering, Kalikiri
India
vishnushreyan@yahoo.com
different components which are required to present
redundancy of sensors and further require for proper selection
to monitor aircraft engine health condition.
Here the problem is in the aircraft turbo fan engine having
considerable number of components attached to it has to select
a suitable sensor. The engine consists of an inlet which supplies
air to the fan [3]. The air that leaves the fan is separated into
two streams, one moving into the engine core and the other
through the bypass duct [4]. The fan is driven by a low
pressure turbine which is connected at the far end. The air that
passes through the engine core is made to pass through
compressor and which is driven by a high pressure turbine [5].
The fuel is injected and ignited in the combustor to produce hot
gas that drives the turbines connected [4]. The two air streams
are made to recombine in the augmenter duct, where additional
fuel may be added to increase the temperature. The air is
passed through the nozzle from the augmenter at a high
velocity, thereby producing the required thrust, for which
nozzle has an adjustable cross section area. The three state
variables used are low pressure rotor speed, high pressure rotor
speed and average hot section metal temperature to simulate
and for which MATLAB is used.
The problem statement is designed with travelling salesman
problem for better optimization and evaluation. The following
section discusses the optimization and related techniques for
the problem statement, particularly concentrating on Genetic
Algorithm. Genetic Algorithm is a search heuristic that mimics
the process of natural selection. This heuristic (also sometimes
called a meta-heuristic) is routinely used to generate useful
solutions to optimization and search problems[1]. Genetic
algorithms belong to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms
(EA), which generate solutions to optimization problems using
techniques inspired by natural evolution, such as inheritance,
mutation, selection, and crossover. Genetic algorithms find
application in bioinformatics, phylogenetics, computational
science, engineering, economics, chemistry, manufacturing,
mathematics, physics, pharmacometrics and other fields [2].
In computing, scheduling is the method by which threads,
processes or data flows are given access to system resources
(e.g. processor time, communications bandwidth). This is
usually done to load balance and share system resources
 2017 International Conference on Innovations in Information, Embedded and Communication Systems (ICIIECS)
effectively or achieve a target quality of service. The need for a
scheduling algorithm arises from the requirement for most
modern systems to perform multitasking (executing more than
one process at a time) and multiplexing (transmit multiple data
streams simultaneously across a single physical channel)[3].
II. GENETIC ALGORITHM
Although the word optimization shares the same route as
optimal, it is rare for process of optimization to produce a truly
optimal solution. The optimized system or solution will be
optimal to produce or applied for only one application or for
one audience [6]. This may reduce the time at a price of
making it consume more memory. If the application where
memory space is the cost then one might deliberately chooses
algorithm which consumes less memory at cost of other
parameter. Often there is not a single algorithm which fits for
all designs and works well in all the cases. So the designers
make tradeoff in selection and optimize the attributes of great
interest. For perfect results the process has to be halted
otherwise the complete optimal solution to reach is far and
cannot be estimated. Fortunately, it is often the cases that the
greatest improvements come early in the process [6].
Genetic Algorithm is a search method based on principles
of natural selection and genetics as said by Fraser,
Bremermann and Holland [7]. The Genetic Algorithm encodes
decision variables of a search problem into finite length strings
of alphabets of certain cordiality [6]. The strings which are
candidate solutions to the search problem are referred to as
chromosomes, the alphabets are referred to as genes and the
values of genes are called alleles. For travelling salesman
problem the chromosome represents a route and the gene
represents the city. In contrast to traditional optimization
techniques Genetic Algorithm works with coding of parameters
rather than the parameters themselves. To evolve good
solutions and to implement natural selection, we need a
measure for distinguishing good solutions from the bad
solutions. The measure can be an objective function that is a
mathematical model or a computer simulation, or it can be a
subjective function to choose good solution over the worse. In
essence, the fitness measure must determine a candidate
solution's relative fitness, which will subsequently be used to
select good solutions [7]. Another important concept of Genetic
Algorithm is the notion of population. Unlike the traditional
search methods, the genetic algorithms rely on a population of
candidate solutions. The population size which usually a user
specified parameter is one of the important factors affecting the
scalability and performance of genetic algorithm [6]. For
example, small population sizes might lead to premature
convergence and yield substandard solutions [7]. On the other
hand, large population sizes lead to unnecessary expenditure of
valuable computational time.
Fig 1: Genetic Algorithm Flow Chart
The figure 1 above presents the basic steps required in
Genetic algorithm and the basic operators that are used are
Selection Operator, Crossover Operator and Mutation
Operator [8]. The Selection Operator is used to select the fitter
chromosomes from the population for later breeding. The
selected chromosomes are called parent chromosomes. The
selection of the chromosomes is done on the basis of some
fitness criteria [9]. This criterion is usually formed depending
on the type of problem. In case of Traveling salesman problem
the fitter chromosome would be the one whose value of the
genes would be minimized. The Crossover Operator is another
basic operator used to combine two parent chromosomes in
order to get a new pair of child chromosomes [9]. The point at
which the chromosomes are changed is called the crossover
site and finally the Mutation operator which performs after
crossover operation. It is used to preserve the genetic diversity
of chromosomes at each generation of population. It is carried
out by altering the genes of the chromosomes. Here we
randomly flip some genes in order to maintain diversity or we
can also exchange some genes present in a chromosome.
Genetic Algorithm has various advantages which made it
more popular and some of the advantages and limitations are
listed below:
Advantages:
1. Does not require any derivative information, which may
not be available for many real world problems [10].
2. Compared to traditional methods it is faster and more
efficient [10].
3. Has very good parallel processing capabilities hence can
be used in multiprocessor based large complex systems
where parallel operations are solicited.
4. Optimizes both continuous and discrete functions and also
multi-objective problems.
5. Provides a list of good solutions and not just a single
solution.
6. Useful when the search space is very large and there are a
large number of parameters are involved.
 2017 International Conference on Innovations in Information, Embedded and Communication Systems (ICIIECS)

Limitations:
1. It is not suitable for all problems, especially problems
which are simple and for which the derivative information
is available.
2. Fitness value is calculated repeatedly which might be
computationally expensive for some problems.
3. Being stochastic, there are no guarantees on the
optimality or the quality of the solution [10].
4. If not implemented properly, it may not converge to the
optimal solution.
III. RESULTS
From the results obtained it is clearly seen that the task
allocation or sensor selection for the aircraft engine is
optimized and found to be routed to a minimum level. All the
nodes selected are covered once i.e, for our investigation we
Figure 4. sensor locations and distance matrix for 40 sensors with 100
have considered 50 nodes distributed randomly around an area iterations.
and the salesman visits once with a total distance covered
obtained is 55.4781 units as shown in figure 2. And the best
solution obtained is maintained around 1000 iterations,
further, the iterations result in the same distance as can be seen
from the figure 3.

Figure 5. sensor locations and distance matrix for 45 sensors with 100
iterations.

Figure 2: Optimized task allocation to the sensors

Figure 3: Sensor Locations, Total Routing, Distance matrix and best solution
Figure 6. sensor locations and distance matrix for 50 sensors with 100
for sensor selection .
iterations
 2017 International Conference on Innovations in Information, Embedded and Communication Systems (ICIIECS)

REFERENCES
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Annamacharya Institute of
Technology and science, Rajampet for the Support in carrying
out this work.