Abstract: Focusing on the problems of nodes deployment of wireless sensor network, we regarded the network coverage as optimization objective, and propose a coverage optimization strategy based on an improved artificial fish swarm algorithm. In the improved artificial fish swarm algorithm, the artificial fishes are classified according to the fitness value and the vision of artificial fish are adjusted during their preying and random behavior on the basis of the classification and the number of iterations. Furthermore, the variation mechanism into the artificial fish with poor fitness value is presented in order to increase the search probability of the algorithm to the optimal direction. Thereby, it could not only improve the convergence speed and the accuracy of optimization, but also avoid falling into local optimal solution. The simulation results show that the improved artificial fish swarm algorithm is superior to the basic artificial fish swarm algorithm, and can effectively improve network coverage.