Prolonging Network Lifetime in Wireless Sensor Networks with Path-Constrained Mobile Sink

Abstract

Abstract-Many studies in recent years have considered the use of mobile sinks (MS) for data gathering in wireless sensor networks (WSN), so as to reduce the need for data forwarding among the sensor nodes (SN) and thereby prolong the network lifetime. Moreover, in practice, often the MS tour length has to be kept below a threshold, usually due to timeliness constraints on the sensors data (delay-critical applications). This paper presents a modified clustering and data forwarding protocol combined with a MS solution for efficient data gathering in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with delay constraints. The adopted cluster formation method is based in the 'residual energy' of the SNs and it is appropriately modified in order to fit properly to the requirement of length-constrained MS tour, which involves, among else, the need for inter-cluster communication and increased data forwarding. In addition, a suitable data gathering protocol is designed, based on an approximated TSP route that satisfies the given length constraint, whereas the proper application of reclustering phases guarantees the effective handling of the 'energy holes' caused around the CHs involved in the MS route. Extended simulation experiments show the stable and energy-efficient behavior of the proposed scheme (thus leading to increased network lifetime) as well as its higher performance in comparison to other competent approaches from the literature.

Network Lifetime Maximization in Wireless Sensor Networks with a Path-Constrained Mobile Sink

“…As to the problem involved in gathering data from sensor nodes to mobile sink through multihop communication, various schemes like hop-based approach [18, 19], QoS-based approach [9, 20], and relay-based approach [21, 22] have been proposed. In these approaches, the sensor nodes are divided into two groups: (i) subsink nodes which can directly communicate with the mobile sinks and (ii) member nodes which can communicate with the sink via multihop transmission.…”

“…The QoS-based approach utilizes the expected QoS to route the data to the sink. In [9], the author modified the shortest path algorithms to adapt to the delay constraint on the sensor data. In particular, in [20], the network lifetime is maximized under the total data collection of the subsink as a QoS constraint.…”

“…These limitations occur due to (i) the obstacle of the environment such as road, wall, and river [7] and (ii) the operation of the application such as in urban area, where the sinks are typically installed on the public transport vehicle which follow the predetermined trajectory [8]. The main objective in this context is how to effectively route the data to mobile sink as it traverses the networks [9, 10]. In this paper, we aim at going further in this direction: we propose to optimize the network lifetime of WSNs with mobile sink whose trajectory is predetermined.…”