Aiming at node deployment optimization in wireless sensor networks,an effective chaotic glowworm swarm optimization was proposed.On the premise that connectivity among nodes was guaranteed,we established a mathematical model to achieve the coverage of objective area with wireless sensor networks,and transformed the node-deployment optimization problem into finding the largest value of a function.The glowworm swarm optimization with the strong search performance was used to search the optimal node deployment.And the cubic mapping chaotic operator was introduced to enhance the ability of local search and robustness and to keep the diversity of population.Then,the proposed algorithm was verified through the numerical benchmark functions and coverage simulation.All the results showed that the proposed algorithm has the ability to jump out of local optimum and has good optimization results,nice stability and strong robustness.Hence,it can satisfy the requirement of optimal node deployment in wireless sensor networks.