Maximizing the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Sink in Delay-Tolerant Applications

This paper proposes a framework to maximize the lifetime of the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) by using a mobile sink when the underlying applications tolerate delayed information delivery to the sink. Within a prescribed delay tolerance level, each node does not need to send the data immediately as it becomes available. Instead, the node can store the data temporarily and transmit it when the mobile sink is at the most favorable location for achieving the longest WSN lifetime. To find the best solution within the proposed framework, we formulate optimization problems that maximize the lifetime of the WSN subject to the delay bound constraints, node energy constraints, and flow conservation constraints. We conduct extensive computational experiments on the optimization problems and find that the lifetime can be increased significantly as compared to not only the stationary sink model but also more traditional mobile sink models. We also show that the delay tolerance level does not affect the maximum lifetime of the WSN.