Exploiting Actuator Mobility for Energy-Efficient Data Collection in Delay-Tolerant Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a large-scale ad hoc multi-hop network deployed (usually, at random) in a region of interest for surveillance purpose. One of its fundamental tasks is to gather sensor readings from the sensory field at data sinks. Research has shown that sensors near a sink deplete their battery power faster than those far apart due to the heavy overhead of relaying messages. Non-uniform energy consumption causes degraded network performance and shortened network lifetime. In this paper, we address the problem of energy-efficient data collection by mobile actuators in delay-tolerant WSN. We present a taxonomy and a comprehensive survey of state of the art on the topic.